How Much Support Is Your Local Provider Getting?At Pondworks we work hard to create a unique work opportunity for our nurse practitioners. How this translates to you as our patient is as follows. The nurse practitioner you see has a whole team supporting his/her work with you. Our providers want to take care of people! They want quality, caring and efficient clinical support to improve their ability to work with you. They also don’t want to be slowed down by the dizzying amount of paperwork and other clerical tasks that can create stress and burn out for providers. Our Top Priority As Mental Health Service Providers In AustinOur goal at Pondworks is to create a full service clinical and administrative team to support our nurse practitioners. The end result should be well supported, happier clinicians who can focus on providing excellent care to you! Take a look at what we do as described below and see how it fits our motto for working at Pondworks:
Clinical Settings and Your Therapists, Psychologists & Councilors EducationEnsuring quality psychiatric care starts with supervision time devoted to each provider. Education and supervision opportunities at Pondworks are thoughtful, designed to help providers “level out” needed skills as well as to further areas of strength. Weekly individual meetings with board-certified psychiatrist Bernard Kim, MD have been “scheduled and kept” since Pondworks opened its doors in 2014. These meetings offer a chance to review cases covering general psychiatry and psychotherapy skills. In addition, group meetings including informal case conferences, formal lectures as well as access to Dell Medical School grand rounds occur each month. The final anchor to support providers stems from having a board-certified psychiatrist practicing on-site and being physically available. This means individual questions or problems can be addressed face to face. Many nurse-practitioners provide care at sites without the benefit of immediate access to a physician physically present on-site.
Administrative Tasks And Distractions That A Mental Health Provider Deals With.There are too many tasks to list them all! How many distractions can a provider handle before your care get impacted? Even though there is no exact answer, at Pondworks our belief is they do affect care and we aim to remove as many possible. This means important daily tasks are handled like:
It also means many behind the scenes activities are kept up with like:
The post How Much Support Is Your Local Austin Mental Health Provider Getting? appeared first on Pondworks Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. https://goo.gl/maps/YdEi3Km69hnIncreasing Our Patients Access To Psychotherapy With Therapists In ResidenceI want to introduce our day to day operations at Pondworks from time to time in our blog. Especially when our commitment to provide balanced care can be showcased and explained to you. We are making efforts every day to expand psychotherapy care for our community as this is often the resiliency factor in treatment. In early January 2019, we launched a pilot program titled “Therapist in Residence” at Pondworks. The goals were to increase our patient’s access to psychotherapy, create trusted connections with community therapists, and establish a standard of psychotherapy care for our patients. Our first round is working well. We established our first therapist in residence and are on track to meet the goals set forth for the project. That leads to our announcement! We are looking for our second therapist in residence. See below our letter the Austin community of psychotherapists and our commitment to the best quality of care for you. Introducing Pondworks Second Therapist-in-Residence PositionHello All! This position gives a therapist access to “in-house” case communication, supervision and exposure opportunities. This is for a therapist to be psychoanalytically informed on biopsychosocial care within a team environment. The opportunity currently extends for one year physically at Pondworks. After the first year, we plan to continue supporting our graduated therapist-in-residence by providing them referrals and split-treatment care as a Pondworks associate. Please consider the position and feel free to pass on this opportunity to others. Follow Therapist-in-Residence <https://www.pondworkspsychiatry.com/pondworks-therapist-in-residence/> link for details and online application. Direct Link:
The post Increasing Our Patients Access To Psychotherapy With Therapists In Residence appeared first on Pondworks Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. https://goo.gl/maps/YdEi3Km69hnLooking for a motivated, team-oriented PMHNP (psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner) for full time employment.Great Central Austin location? Competitive compensation? Biopsychosocial care? Team Environment? Is it possible? ….Yes!
————————What you will get————————————-- Weekly face to face supervision included at no extra charge to you:
Group Education and Supervision at no extra charge to you:
Access to a board-certified physician, Bernard Kim, MD with top-tier credentials:
Reasonable and Flexible ScheduleHave enough time to get to know your patients
Competitive pay based on clinical hours worked:
Pondworks Start-up support:
And More…
Website: www.pondworkspsychiatry.com *Please submit1) a cover letter/personal statement describing your interest in the position 2) a resume/C.V. NOTE: We will not consider any applicant who submits a CV without a cover letter. The purpose of the cover letter is to demonstrate your written communication skills, provide details about your work history, and explain why you would like to work at Pondworks.*
The post Nurse Practitioner Job Post appeared first on Pondworks Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. https://goo.gl/maps/YdEi3Km69hnPsychotherapy in Austin | How to Work with Negative EmotionsNegative thoughts can plague the mind in the most unexpected time or situation, or even stick around for days to months. When these unwanted and worrisome thoughts frequent one’s mind, it can affect a person’s life and the interactions with family, the workplace, and in the community. Have you had lingering thoughts you can’t shake off no matter how hard you try? That, despite several attempts, they remain to haunt you when you least expect it? Is it stressing you out? Are you becoming anxious with the inability to shake the negativity? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. There are other people who struggle with this dilemma or cloudy thoughts and negativity. Some have overcome the problem and moved on from these dark chapters of their life. It often just takes time.. But when you want to be proactive, one can seek professional help. Professional help such as psychotherapy in Austin is seen to be a long-term solution, especially for clients who have been struggling with negative thoughts for far too long. If this problem has already altered a life for the worse, or pervades on a routine basis, its highly suggested to seek a psychotherapist near you… Overcoming Negative Thoughts | Talk Therapy and PsychotherapyExpert psychotherapists say the key to overcoming negative thinking is to overcome it. Once you understand what causes this negativity, you can integrate your skills to work with your mind and turn your life around. Easy enough, but how? Cognitive Defusion – Recognizing the PatternNegative thinking has a pattern, repetitive and unhelpful thoughts that can trigger unpleasant emotions such as stress, anxiety, and depression. Once you recognize this pattern, learn how to step away from. The best way to do this is to come into terms that these thoughts in your head are simply just thoughts. They are not a reality unless you make them. This is cognitive defusion. You defuse with these thoughts or else it will become your reality. There are several patterns that you can look out for. Identify them and start stepping away from these patterns. Here are a few: Anxious Thoughts – Have you ever been in a situation where you imagine the future and create scenarios and think about what can go horribly wrong? The most common line used here is ‘what if?’ Suddenly, images of yourself lying on your deathbed, a possible breakup with your partner a day before your anniversary, or losing income come to mind.. These thoughts simply ruin your positivity even though you know them to be fictional. The thought of nothing going your way in the future will likely just drag you down and make you anxious, stifling actual growth. Destructive Criticisms – “I’m not good enough.” If you aim for perfection yet you always think that your effort, skills or experience are not good enough, you’ll criticize yourself and harbor the unnecessary need to self-improve all the time. This can result in low self-esteem and low self-confidence. This thinking can also affect how you see other around you. Moreover, striving to be good enough can take a physical and mental toll. You also might have the tendency to criticize others which can lead to a rift in your personal relationships. It’s never wrong to always want to improve, but if it’s because you think you aren’t good enough, then it becomes unhealthy for you in the long run. Seek the help of a psychiatrist in Austin for better guidance and professional help. Pondworks Psychiatry and PsychotherapyTalking about how you feel is good for you. That’s a scientific fact. Really! Talk therapy, which is known to be effective, is in part effective because of the positive sense of feeling “put together” or whole when we are heard. Put another way, when you put your experience into words, you gain clarity and momentum to change your life. At Pondworks, about half of all our appointments are weekly psychotherapy sessions combined with medication management. You can rest assured that when we talk about providing psychotherapy we are “walking the talk!” Providers are truly practicing, learning and growing in their ability to conduct psychotherapy. Talk to us! The post Psychotherapy in Austin | How to Work with Negative Emotions appeared first on Pondworks Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. https://goo.gl/maps/YdEi3Km69hnThe Core of Activating MotivationHello again and welcome to our 2nd blog on Motivational interviewing! We started the series with the plug “Motivating for Free!” and how motivation we see in our work follow certain steps or stages. If you want to take a look at these stages see our first blog, How To Get Motivated For Free, and remember the free book by SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) Enhancing Motivation for Change in Substance Abuse, that is free for anyone to download. In today’s blog, I’m going to talk more about the basic principles of a therapist uses motivational interviewing. There are four basic principles for therapists or medical doctors to know: Express Empathy For Yourself and OthersIn other words, we need to start from a still place. The first step often is to neither accept or reject the behavior that we are trying to change. More importantly, apply some gentle pressure to the problem. Write about it. Discuss it with a trusted friend! Talk about it with a therapist! Make some guesses about why the problem might be happening. Develop Discrepancy By Talking Your ProblemDevelop Discrepancy- Talking about why a problem might be happening is the beginning of developing discrepancy. When does the behavior work? How is it positive or negative in its impact on your life? How might it be holding you back? This kind of therapy talk or self-talk often gives you a little space from the problem. Roll with ResistanceIn therapy, there’s a saying that “Anyone starting therapy has one foot still out the door” In other words, we all resist change. The best “judo” for this is to talk, talk, talk or write, write, write. Our first steps to change can take a while. You might not be able to see it but the talking is kind of like the engineer building the blueprint for the bridge to change behaviors. Support Self-EfficacyAs much as a book (or even more so a therapist) can be a powerful ally in changing our behaviors, we have to act on change. The first three steps lead to us finding a way to begin action when we’re ready. As we talk,…talk…talk more about behavior as a therapist we often see that our interest in changing become more important and we gain confidence in changing. Once we reach a critical “tipping point” in knowing the importance of change and gaining confidence we tend to be more able to act. Wrapping up, MI really is more what we call a stance or “way of being” with people as opposed to a technique which we apply. I’m drawn to this idea because the most important part of getting help or helping yourself is being a human being during the process. By this I mean a gentle understanding sense of how hard motivating for change can be, especially when we get started. Stay tuned for more…. The post The Core of Activating Motivation And How To Get Going! appeared first on Pondworks Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. https://goo.gl/maps/YdEi3Km69hnDid I say New Facebook Drug Side Effect Group?….Sorry, I meant a new FDA “side effect” system website.How big is the internet? A quick google search states there are upwards of 1.8 billion websites. In other words, you get the picture, it’s huge!! All of that data on the internet includes information posted on various websites. These websites are about medications used in medicine including psychiatry. Some of these sites provide good information, some not so much. Today I have great news on a resource your providers at Pondworks can use to understand medication side effects. These are the serious side effects that could affect Facebook and Drug Side Effects your care. The website goes by the name FAERS or FDA Adverse Event Reporting System. At Pondworks we use FDA information to guide our decision making and sites like FAERS provide us with useful information. FAERS is also accessible to you, but get some help when trying to understand all the numbers you will see on the screen. If you want to take a try at it, there is a FAERS Tutorial you can go through that helps understand how the dashboard works and the limitations of the system. Looking at the data provided by other people taking the medication (consumers) is a good way to compare typical experiences. Here are a few tips and warnings for looking at FAERS:First off, FAERS can’t tell you how frequently a particular side effect occurs compared to all the people in the U.S. who are taking take the medication. This is a limitation of the current system and should be working better as time goes on.
If you’d like more information on how this website or the FAERS website can help you, reach out to us here or the contact page. The post Did I say New Facebook Drug Side Effect Group? appeared first on Pondworks Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. https://goo.gl/maps/YdEi3Km69hnLearn How to Motivate for Free!Learn How to Motivate Yourself and Accomplish What You Want For Free! Today you are really going to get something for free! A book and it talks about how we can motivate for meaningful change in our lives. I’m sorry, but there is work in getting the book’s ideas into your daily life. Hopefully, the ideas will help make the work a little bit easier. In 1991 Millner & Rollnick published a book on how to help people get motivated to tackle their addictions and it covered a type of therapy title Motivation Interviewing. Their down to earth ideas about human change requiring a friendly non-judgemental relationship helping to start self-review and spark motivation caught on rapidly. “And the rest is history” as they say with the therapy framework rapidly reaching great popularity. Learn How to Motivate Yourself and Accomplish What You Want For Free! In fact, SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) found it so useful that in 1999 they published a 244-page book, Tip 35, Enhancing Motivation for Change in Substance Abuse, that is free for anyone to download. Pondworks in Austin, TX knows a ridiculously good deal when we see one! Motivational Interviewing is an awesome therapy framework, and you can’t beat free for a book to read about it. Our Pondworks meetings often use the ideas of Motivation Interviewing and we spend formal educational time on learning the therapy. So what has happened in the last twenty years since the book was published? The SAMHSA editor took on the challenge in 2017 and came to the following basic conclusion. Some of the ideas have changed but the core remains the same are used daily by many providers including here at Pondworks. The editor highlights some of the changes over the year. Miner and Rollnick also have a 3rd edition book published in 2013 for the most current ideas. So What’s This Motivation About And Will It Work For Me?So the basic idea is that change towards health follows along a pathway with different stops along the way. The names for each of these are followed. To help you get the idea I’ll the comments in parentheses relate do many us in our stages to start healthy exercise (see previous exercise blog link). Pre-Contemplation (exercise? What’s that?), Contemplation (I do remember doing it for a few months….I slept better for sure…but it’s hard), Preparation (I think walking early in the morning is doable, I’ll start on Monday in one week), Action (I’m walking!! I’m walking!!), Maintenance (I’m going to write it on the calendar so I don’t forget….Jane and Bob said yes to walk with me on Mondays and Wednesdays). Interested? In this blog series, I’ll take a look at what makes Motivational Interviewing tick. As you read along with me (or in the SAMHSA free book!), you might find that the basic ideas are helpful beyond issues of addiction and are relatively easy to incorporate into your own self-help or growth. If not, come visit us at Pondworks if you like the ideas, but want more help with them. The post Learn How to Really Motivate Yourself For Free! appeared first on Pondworks Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. https://goo.gl/maps/YdEi3Km69hnCompare Austin Mental Health ProvidersSo you’ve made the most important step of reaching out for help, only to run into the big question. How do you choose the right mental health provider in Austin Texas for you? Who should you call? How do you begin the process of figuring out who’s the right for your particular issue? How to choose the best mental health provider in Austin? At Pondworks in Austin, we want you to understand one important part of setting your expectations and that’s level of training. Training isn’t everything though. Good rapport or what we call therapeutic alliance can happen at all levels of training and we know that a large percent of therapy benefit comes from just that. When we feel listened and cared for our symptoms can improve and we can begin a process of growth and change. Training means experience under the supervision and often helps a provider become more independent. Here’s a general rule of thumb….more training less continuing supervision. So we ask again, how do you choose the right mental health provider for you? At Pondworks we believe in supporting our providers. take a look at the figure “Compare Austin MH providers” below and see how we stand behind what we say. At Pondworks we lead the field in support and supervision for our providers. The more we invest in these ingredients the happier and more engaged your providers are with you and it shows in our outcomes. The post How Do You Compare All Of The Mental Health Providers In Austin, Texas? appeared first on Pondworks Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. https://goo.gl/maps/YdEi3Km69hnTexas And Marijuana. Should It Be Legal? Should Cannabis Use Be Part Of Your Mental Health Care Routine?Texas And Marijuana. Should It Be Legal? For me, as a doctor, marijuana is more of a practical “how-to” issue for a very important problem. That problem is a person is coming to me for asking for help. Consider a made-up conversation I’m having with Dave for the treatment of anxiety. “Hi, Dave. I’m going to prescribe a medication that might help, but first I need to let you know about some side effects. It will lower your ability to make new memories, make you twice as likely to get in a car wreck, and we’re not sure but it may effect size/function of certain areas of your brain, it’s probably temporary. Now don’t worry, those problems might depend on how much active medication is in the prescription, but the pharmacy won’t tell me how much they’re putting in.” Wow! That sounds like a hard thing for me to convince patients would be a good treatment plan. I certainly wouldn’t go for that. Sure, marijuana isn’t used for a sober, straightforward problem your working on in your doctor’s office. It’s a recreational drug whose primary appeal may be more about getting the “stoned” feeling in social settings. That said it’s staggering how many people use marijuana for anxiety…to find a way to self-medicate a horrible feeling they might not know any other way to find relief. As much as I can see the reasons, when someone reaches my doorstep the question becomes how can I take over with talk therapy and medication to create a solution where you’re not so alone with the problem. Yes being alone with a problem is often much of what gives anxiety its teeth. Self-medicating with marijuana puts you in place that might not help with self-care.Unfortunately, marijuana (as with all abusable drugs including the legal ones) gets in the way of me getting “in there” with you. Thats even besides the quesitons of legalization in Texas. Should It Be Legal? Should Cannabis Be Part Of Your Mental Health Care? Self-medicating with marijuana puts you in place that doesn’t work well; it makes you the doctor deciding how much to take when to take it, what it means to be taking it. Trying to figure out these answers alone and on your own usually only worsens the problem in the long run. It also doesn’t allow me in to help to offer hope for some immediate relief and a resiliency plan that leads you to more independence from anxiety. The post Should Cannabis Be Part Of Your Mental Health Care? appeared first on Pondworks Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. https://goo.gl/maps/YdEi3Km69hnWhat do I gain by Exercising and How Much do I need to do?What do I gain by Exercising and How Much do I need to do? We live in Austin and people are very active in this loved city of ours. Last time we talked about exercise I introduced the guidelines for American that the American Medical Association put released and the time before then we talked about how yoga can improve your health. So let’s talk today about what you actually have to do and what we can tell you about what to expect by using the table below from JAMA. Vigorous? Moderate? Light? Each have different levels of benefit, but how do I figure out what I’m doing? We talked in our last article about using google to find a 2.5 mile/hr pace which is moderate exercise. Today we’re going to, no pun intended, talk about the “Talk Test”. This is a great and simple way to get an idea of how hard your exercising. Here is the explanation for the test. If you can carry on a conversation but not sing, the exercise would be moderate, and if you can only say a few words before needing to breathe we would consider it vigorous. The Importance Of Regular Exercise For AmericansThese are really important ways to get an idea of how much you need to exercise. As you can see above, if you are doing vigorous exercise it doubles your benefit. Another way to say it, is your total workout time get’s cut in half. Now let’s talk about the pay off! There are benefits you get right away and then others that build over time. Almost immediately you can expect to see some improvements in: blood pressure, insulin sensitivity (diabetes type II prevention), sleep, anxiety , depression and cognition(clearer thinking). These benefits keep improving as the months go by and you keep exercising. We are also finding many other ways your health improves as you stick with exercising. If you want more information check out Health.gov web page and I’ll come back soon with another blog! The post Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans – Part Two appeared first on Pondworks Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. https://goo.gl/maps/YdEi3Km69hn |
AuthorPondworks Psychiatry & Psychotherapy provides office-based, biopsychosocial mental health care for the greater Austin community. |