Episode 4 A Diverse & Authentic Clinical Team Watch Now https://youtu.be/4BzwTSCCAS8 *Fast forward past 5 minute prep time to watch episode
Listen Now Episode 4 We discuss the importance of having a strong clinical team that is diverse in their strengths and approaches, but above all, has the ability to show up as their authentic self.
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Select Quotes In order to do this work, you have to your own work. You have to work on yourself and have a high degree of self-awareness, appropriately placed boundaries, along with an openness. In order to be open to impacting people you also get to be open to being impacted by people, it goes both ways. Jason Friesema MA, LPC, LAC, - Chief Clinical Officer In addiction treatment, authenticity in a counselor is absolutely the most essential. A lot of our clients have experienced treatment and counseling in the past, so they know the language, the “clinical jargon”, they can read a counselor who is not being genuine like that. So they need to be able to show up as their true self. Clinton Nicholson, MA, LPC, NCC - Chief Operations Officer Episode Transcripts Episode 4 Transcript [Music] welcome to another episode of finding peaks i believe this is uh episode four i was told yeah yeah it's again because i was told the prior episode was the third and i actually stated it was the fourth so welcome to the fourth episode here maths hard yes yeah math is difficult so just want to start uh today with uh we have some title changes in the room here at uh peaks recovery centers jason friesma is now our chief clinical officer oh and the crowd goes wild thank you for a while and introducing the new chief operating officer of peaks recovery centers clint nicholson everybody clinton yes also a therapist clap i would slow class i would also like to introduce also a therapist i'd also like to introduce clinton's cowboy boots uh also making an appearance today right here yeah i recently purchased a truck and they came with the truck nice congratulations on that and i have a really big deal obligated to wear them by dodge so as across that off the list as these episodes roll along we're getting feedback and some of that feedback so far has been that uh we're a little we're seemingly a little too uptight um in these sessions so we're really trying to explore not doing that here so expect bad jokes so let's expect bad jokes moving forward always difficult at least for me in doing this show because there's a seriousness to addiction treatment certainly and individuals are suffering of course across america from the disease of addiction and so um it's not always you know i haven't personally known how to approach it myself or how serious to be on camera because it is serious to us and certainly each and every day we come at you know and to work with the seriousness and getting people well but uh certainly want people to appreciate watching us and not be so serious yeah do you guys like to comment on that i'm feeling a little nervous today i agree okay um i'm hopeful that you've scripted some jokes i have no jokes okay so we'll jump right into it okay yeah so last week uh clinton said something was a little passive i don't know if everybody caught it in the third episode but i think he said something along the lines of i'm not excellent i'm maybe great at the family side of things that's uh that's a quote yeah okay okay yeah but something along those lines exposes the reality of addiction treatment centers and in that you know i think taking one step back you know peaks started with 36 beds six years ago and we have 36 beds today the thing that has changed at peaks recovery centers is we went from 12 staff members to 75 staff members and 67 of those i believe today are full-time staff members here so so we're advancing this enormous team around these 36 beds over the past six years and i just wanted to talk about through the lens of the clinical lens about the importance of having a team i mean in essence you're both lpcs of course you're in lac you're about to you know get your lac after taking the test recently equal licensures should mean equal skill sets right right but they don't it turns out turns out they don't do that so yeah and actually you know clinton and i uh since you're bringing us up specifically we we're very different in our approaches um i like to dig in uh emotionally and clinton likes to make fun of me for that and clinton likes to put things together and look forward with clients and so uh actually it complements our styles quite well actually it turns out that turns into just working really well together and and the other thing is having a wide variety of clinicians in a wide variety of skill levels gives us the opportunity to to have clients that are drawn to various clinicians and various things that clinicians say in various clinical approaches so and and the other thing that's different is that i'm funny and clinton uh thinks he's funny yeah that checks out that does absolutely yeah that absolutely checks out yeah so to elaborate in a slightly more um intelligent way than jason so yeah like like you said jason our our styles do differ again you like to do feelings things yeah and i do less of that i do more pragmatic practical solution-focused stuff that's based in kind of integration and you know one of the interesting things is that because we have these two different styles we were actually we've actually started to model our programming around that you know we our clients get to come in and they get to really dig deep like jason said and really um gain a tremendous amount of emotional insight and then they also on the sort of the second half of that programming is they get to actually land that in something that's more practical and skills based and experiential so this is just an example one example of how you can utilize these different skill sets from counselors and knowing your counselor's strengths and also being very transparent and uh about you know like i said family is not my specialty it's just it just isn't i i have other areas that i focus in and um that i excel in so those are the those are those the places that i'm going to lean into clinically yeah i mean for me i just think it's it's relevant and important for treatment centers across america to be honest about their approaches to care and through that honesty match the curriculum to the skill sets of the clinicians and not just you know unnecessarily force clinicians without those skill sets to run you know groups or individual sessions you know leading to you know less quality in in the environment of care and here in colorado springs you know we've got what a little more than a million people now i mean i feel like since i've moved here there's like a quarter million people have at least moved here but um you know we go we put an indeed out you know indeed out there to attract clinical firepower into our organization and just kind of even in a population of over a million people now just kind of talk through our experiences of the difficulty in actually locating the talent that can fit the needs of not only our patient demographic but that is informed through the curriculum that you know we've built out here at peaks well certainly just culturally at peaks we really do work to well being a clinician at peaks let me just put it that way uh somebody who works for us it's a pretty immersive experience honestly we don't just see clients for an hour a week in an office and then kind of get about our business we we walk with clients we play disc golf on our campus with clients we play cornhole while we're talking about various things so we really or we even share meals with them or or have coffee at times as well just to [Music] offer that support and in that path like that is also hard work for clinicians at times because uh that that is what causes us to go above and beyond and and i think it's the essence of what we do and that isn't really trained in school it's the extra special sauce i guess if you will that that i think our clients always feel supported and heard and that there is always somebody available to talk to you mentioned how the growth of our staff part of that is there's always someone awake and around for somebody to have a conversation with i just this week had a client who was who told me that at 3 am he woke up and couldn't fall back asleep and went out and had an hour-long conversation uh with our client care uh person and so i just really that matters having that availability and having kind of this real-time ability to be supported and cared for yeah i mean we really the expectation for our counselors is um there's a level of vulnerability that you have to be able to achieve with your clients in order to be to again to sort of like fit into the peaks culture you know it's uh we really strive for that community feeling and i mean there are primary counselors and clients are assigned to a primary counselor but the reality is that every counselor there is every client is there for every client and throughout the day different clients will pull different counselors and sit down with them talk with them um and again i think it kind of speaks back to you know different levels of different types of strengths and different types of styles you know because our counselors run groups with everybody and we're again we're fully immersive the clients start to learn what that style is and what that type of counseling approach is and they will start to gravitate you know and it gives them the opportunity if um you know if somebody's looking for you know really struggled and a grief and loss week and is really needs to process that they can find jason you know and if somebody is getting ready to discharge and they're freaking out about what is the actual pr practical side of sobriety look like they can seek me out so i keep touching my microphones banging in the control room yeah yeah so yeah this is just about my flaws today this is me being vulnerable everybody so yeah so you're doing great so you got you are you're doing great thank you so you guys have the the fancy credentials lpclac behind your name and i think one of the things almost almost lac behind us wow yeah the things that i want to pull from that is it seems like just just having the degree doesn't inform the skill sets or the ability to show up for individuals especially in a complex patient demographic environment that you know we operate within so what do you think is one of the most crucial like fundamental pieces to becoming you know a great clinician or a clinician that can inspire such a complex patient demographic including family systems and so forth i'll give a cliche sentence which is in order to do this work you have to do the work you're on work you have to do your own work you have to work on yourself and and have a high degree of self-awareness along with appropriately placed boundaries along with an openness to in order to be open to impacting people you also get to be open to being impacted by people it goes both ways you can't kind of be unidirectional in that way and that is the part that makes peaks so rewarding honestly and so challenging both i think in my experience particularly with addiction treatment authenticity in a counselor is just the absolutely most essential i mean a lot of our clients this is not their first rodeo right they've been through this process they've experienced uh counseling and treatment in the past and they can just i mean they know the language they know the the sort of like clinical jargon and they can read a counselor who is not being genuine like that you know so being able to show up as your true self not showing up as your counselor self which again requires that you're doing your work you know and it requires yet again to be vulnerable and being open to the idea like jason said of this sort of reciprocated exchange of of insight this this reciprocated exchange of kind of growth and exploration so yeah absolutely there's a there's a great deal of addiction treatment centers out there that you know state that they have similar services to us that they can stabilize and they can provide a continuation of care and all of this sort of stuff but the differences in departments by comparison are quite extraordinary at times i mean at peaks we employ a full 24 7 medical team to have two providers on psychiatrists and an md at any given time to support our patient demographic that is generally less than a census of assistants that can be made available to our patients and the supporting residential staff certainly our client care aids and you know never mind all the administrative support that goes on i mean how fundamentally important is it you know we've grown from the very beginning jason um at peak's recovery not having all of these things on the side what have we what have we learned along the way in bringing in these departments and um you know building them up with the intentionality and intensity that they offer the patient demographic how much is that supporting the clinical approach to care well to your point um the ability to staff our program well and with a lot of uh qualified and trained people not just clinical but across all departments does really i think give us the ability to really become excellent within our department and then kind of go the extra mile within that department rather than kind of spreading thin we get to spread deep i just made that up that's brilliant yeah i actually really like that thank you it should be a good shirt yeah next week available on our website yeah that was something yeah that was a t-shirt creation yeah absolutely yeah absolutely only four episodes how do i follow that right so next question um i i think you know i've worked up for a lot of treatments uh treatment centers and just different uh behavioral health centers and the the level of staff to us when i you know when i first came in i was just kind of like flabbergasted about like how much how much staff and how much support and how many people are really involved in the the sort of like whole peaks programming and um i realized very quickly that what we have the ability to do is truly wrap around people and give them a level of safety and support and acceptance that for a huge number of our clients they've never experienced before and it's powerful it's absolutely powerful and it's transformative which um you just don't see a lot of other places you just don't see that in other places yeah i think that you know just the other day we had a one of our patients uh was disrupted in a medical meeting and immediately wanted to leave and in my head i just thought somebody's gonna wrap their arms around him quite quickly and the beautiful thing about having all of this staff to support these individuals is that though this individual can be immediately attended to whether through on-call staff or whatever's going on that all the other patients on this side aren't there their quality of care isn't going down at the same time so i like this idea of building depth within departments by having departments in support of it rather than stretching departments then um you know which you know felt like kind of our humble beginnings you know and so to be able to advance these levels of care and towards and in the direction of patient care i think has just been a wonderful experience that i just want you know families out there to be cognizant of as you shop for addiction treatment services how crucial it is to have these dynamics within a company culture and also too to have maybe through the lens of humility to be as a ceo to be sitting here with you know other chief officers of our company culture be able to state openly like i'm not that's not my specialty and that's not my category and when we recognize that honestly as addiction treatment centers or any really medical setting um you know we can then move out into you know to the indeed ads and really pull in the talent necessary to fill those gaps in the direction of patient care so well i think you know candidly clinton since you are new i know you and i've wrestled with how many staff do we need and why why do we have so many like i've listened to you do it and push back on you that like this you're right we could actually stretch ourselves thinner and we could yeah um but it is really uh our staffing levels that give us some opportunity and time to have the between groups and the between sessions conversations um that really all the planned stuff is so critically important but a lot of the change happens uh in the margins well i'm lucky for you even though i'm an operations guy i'm also a clinician so i'm able to sort of see that um see both sides of that because operationally i mean if that that single lens tells a completely different story and i think that that's what a lot of uh programs are built around you know but by being able to sort of bring operational and clinical components together um i mean that just kind of describes peaks in a nutshell you know there's just this beaut this amazing blend of of focus and uh it has created an organization and a culture and programming that is extremely unique and very powerful so yeah absolutely well i again i appreciate the opportunity to present episode four the real episode four yeah that's episode eight episode four join us next week for episode four looking forward to episode five to continue to bring you content hopefully our humor or lack thereof is not in the way of you hearing the important information we uh desire to deliver to everybody today i'm just gonna give one more here please comment with the boots in focus we look forward to your comments um please give us questions so that we can provide answers and insights into the addiction treatment space and from here in colorado springs signing off until next time