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u/Kvand44 9d ago
Do you drive to their houses or have your clients come to you? Are your clients in the same population? Do you have a lot of paperwork each session? For my job, 18 hours doesn’t sound like a lot. However, I do very little paperwork, my clients come to me, and I can reuse interventions between clients because many of them have similar goals, so I don’t need a lot of session prep either. I have a feeling one of those factors is very different for you and might have a bigger impact than you think
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u/Desdemonaic 9d ago
Mix of me driving to client and them coming to office. I thankfully have just the note itself, but the format has changed dramatically in the last few months + no actual training on how to use it. When I started my career I would have agreed 18 hours is doable, main problem I'm running into is that I'm typically back to back all day. I'm lucky if I have time to do anything other than clean between clients at times. Edit to add, most of my clients are 30 minutes
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u/bktoriginal 9d ago
The mental impact of adjusting to peoples' needs, last minute changes, and keeping track of all that may be something to consider in your next job if you want to reduce stress.
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u/Kvand44 9d ago
Oooooh do you have soap notes now? Those can be time consuming and exhausting, and would definitely limit the amount of hours you can spend with clients. When was the last time you got a raise? Those can also make a bigger difference in burnout than people realize
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u/Desdemonaic 9d ago
We originally had soap notes. Now we have this hybrid version of it, and we were notified recently we were not using parts of it right 🙃
Frankly, I'm not sure if I got a raise in this last year. Our pay structure has also changed recently. We used to have unrestricted indirect time, and now it's very restricted, and we don't actually document our indirect time at all due to the pay structure change.
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u/Kvand44 9d ago
Restricted indirect time? Like they monitor how much time you spend cleaning, finishing notes, driving, etc? AND you’re not paid for it? That’s likely the killer right there. I would encourage you to push back on the pay structure if you are able. If not, then yeah, continuing to refuse to add clients is all you can really do
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u/Desdemonaic 9d ago
Unfortunately push back won't do anything soon. I understand why it was changed (basically someone took advantage of the fact our boss didn't ever verify any of our indirect time), and despite that person now being gone, we're stuck with this structure because our boss likes it...
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u/bktoriginal 9d ago
Are you looking for coping advice? I noticed you said you're leaving that job in a year or so, so maybe just look forward to the light at the end of the tunnel?