OATdb Archive

2014 - 2015

Counseling Services

Goal
6.Engage Students In Programs And Services That Promote Critical Thinking And Lifelong Learning Skills.
Engage students in programs and services that promote critical thinking and lifelong learning skills.

Objective
Mindfullness Group Effectiveness
Given the high number of students coming into the Counseling Center dealing with issues related to anxiety, we are looking at new ways to effectively treat a large number of students in the least amount of time. Mindfulness medidation practices have been proven to be effective at reducing anxiety and improve emotional well-being in general. The Counseling Center has developed a new Mindfulness program, designed as a five-week experienital skills-based group. We would like to determine the general usefullness of this group prior to expending additional time or budgetary resources on expanding this program.


KPI
Mindfullness Group Outcomes
80% of group participants will rate the overall group expereince as "Good" or better on a brief assessment of the group. 80% of group participants will endorse "Agree" or higher on items related to motivation to make changes related to stress management and incorporation of mindfulness practices into daily life.

(Please refer to "Result" section for assessment results, including copies of the actual assessment)

Result
Mindfullness Group Results
100% of group members reported that the overall experience of the group was "Good" or better. Additionally, 100% of group members endorsed "Agreed" or higher on the times relating to motivation to make changes related to stress management, and incorporation of mindfulness practices into daily life.

Action
Mindfullness Group Plan
Although the overall outcomes of the group were positive, we were only able to recruit 5 students into the group during the semester, which minimized the overall impact of the data. We have had some challenges in general with our groups this year, and so we will spend some time during the summer gaining some additional staff traning on developing a group therapy program. Once that training is complete we will do some strategic planning around our approach to groups and will revisit the Mindfullness group as part of that process.

Goal
Provide Innovative Programs And Services That Attract And Retain Targeted Student Groups.
Provide innovative programs and services that attract and retain targeted student groups.

Objective
Counseling Center Productivity
Shortly after moving into the new Counseling Center facility at the start of the fall semester of '15, it became clear that we would be seeing a record number of students over the course of the year. It also became clear that we would need to rework many of our workflow processes in order to keep up with the demand for services and to minimize any disruptions to services in general. In order to ensure that the Counseling Center is operating as efficinetly and effectively as possible, we will undertake an in-depth review of data related to productivity to guide the revision of our processes and practices.

KPI
Productivity Data
Data from the Counseling Center's EMR will be pulled to review trends in overal productivity, as well as trends in specific activities and responsibilities that the clinical staff engage in throughout the day. This data will be compared to national benchmarking data from the AUCCCD Director's survey. All Counseling Center data should be in a range +/- 3 points from the national benchmarking data.

Result
Productivity Audit Results
An audit of Counseling Center productivity found that clinical staff members were engaged in activities defined as "Direct Service" during 40% of their work week, activities defined as "Indirect Serivce" during 40% of their work week, and activities defined as "Administrative" during 20% of their work week.

Benchmarking data taken from the FY14 AUCCCD Director's Survey showed that the national average of time spent in activities defined as "Direct Service" was 60%, time spent in activities defined as "Indirect Service" was 25%, and time spent in activities defined as "Administrative" was 15%.

Action
Mid-Year Retreat
Based on the information gathered from the audit, the Counseling Center's mid-year retreat focused on re-working the flow of clients and creating new expectations around hours of direct service etc., along with a secondary look at what the Counseling Center coded as direct service/indirect service/administrative. This new plan was implented during the spring semester of FY15. Based on this new structure, the amount of time spent in Direct Service was _____, the amount of time spent in Indirect Service was ________, and the amount of time spent in Administrative tasks was ________. The overall plan will be re-evaluated during the Fall semester of FY16, as fall is typically the busiest semester and will provide the best indicator of the overall successfullness of the new guidelines.



Update to previous cycle's plan for continuous improvement We have been utilizing the SMS based reminder system for approximately one year, which seems to have contributed to the fact that our no-show rate continues to be lower than the national average for a school of our size. Based on this fact, we will continue to utilize these features.

We spent signficant time during the summer of FY15 looking at different ways to capture information on presenting concerns and other clinical problems. A new data-form was developed within our EMR to capture this data, which has become part of an assessment project for FY16. Please refer to that set of assessment data for additinal information.

Plan for continuous improvement Due to the the previously mentioned challenges related to running our groups during FY15, the entire Counseling Center clinical staff participated in an intensive day-long training on current best practices for group therapy in a university setting and developing a group therapy culture. As a result, we have revised our process for referring clients to group, and have also developed some new polices and procedures around group therapy in general. The overall goal of this effort is to increase the number of students utilizing groups across the board, as this is one of the most effective treatment modalities for a variety of presenting concerns.