Treatment Planning and Interventions · Planning Principles

The Plan Before the Technique

Six steps in order, six things clients have said they want, and one question about what consent covers. The through-line is that every intervention should be traceable back to the formulation.

What this exercise practises

Putting the planning process in the order the dependencies require, telling a clinical goal from a frequency target or somebody else's goal, and knowing what sex therapy adds to a general consent conversation.

The three statements that fail the goal test are all useful clinical information. Failing the test and being worthless are not the same thing, and the feedback says what each one is good for instead.

Estimated time to complete this exercise: 15 minutes

1The process
2The goals
3Consent
4Close

Before you begin

How this one works

Three parts. Build the six-step planning process in order, then triage six things clients have actually said they want, then one question about consent.
The ordering part is not a memory test. Two of the six steps are routinely done in the wrong order in practice, and the feedback says which and why it costs something.
In the triage, three of the six statements are clinical goals and three are not. The ones that are not are all useful clinical information, which is a different thing.
Nothing is graded and nothing is recorded. Reloading starts it again.

Intervention selection should be traceable back to the formulation. When a clinician cannot explain why a specific intervention was chosen for a specific client at a specific point in treatment, the intervention may have been selected without adequate clinical reasoning.

References

  1. Leiblum, S. R. (Ed.). (2010). Treating sexual desire disorders: A clinical casebook. Guilford Press.
  2. McCabe, M. P., Sharlip, I. D., Lewis, R., Atalla, E., Balon, R., Fisher, A. D., Laumann, E., Lee, S. W., & Segraves, R. T. (2016). Risk factors for sexual dysfunction among women and men: A consensus statement from the Fourth International Consultation on Sexual Medicine 2015. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 13(2), 153–167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2015.12.015
  3. Rosen, R. C., Brown, C., Heiman, J., Leiblum, S., Meston, C., Shabsigh, R., Ferguson, D., & D'Agostino, R. (2000). The Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI): A multidimensional self-report instrument for the assessment of female sexual function. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 26(2), 191–208. https://doi.org/10.1080/009262300278597
  4. Rosen, R. C., Riley, A., Wagner, G., Osterloh, I. H., Kirkpatrick, J., & Mishra, A. (1997). The International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF): A multidimensional scale for assessment of erectile dysfunction. Urology, 49(6), 822–830. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0090-4295(97)00238-0