Therapist competence

Scalable methods for assessing therapist competence

Existing methods

To evaluate therapist training good measures of therapist competence are needed. The current measures are unsatisfactory for a number of reasons (Fairburn and Cooper, 2011). Judging therapist competence on the basis of patient outcome is attractive but problematic under most circumstances due to the small number of patients that will have been treated by each trainee therapist. Much the same applies to the assessment of therapy sessions although there are additional difficulties in terms of what can be assessed using this method. Instead, we believe that more attention should be paid to the assessment of applied knowledge, particularly if it can be assessed electronically. We also think there could be greater use of standardized role plays akin to the OSCEs used in general medical education.

New scalable methods

CREDO is in the process of developing new ways of assessing therapist competence. One is an e-measure of applied knowledge (Cooper et al, 2015), and the other is a role-play based measure of therapist skill that can be administered remotely. We have completed tests of their psychometric properties and the results are promising. Professor Zafra Cooper is leading this work.

Further Reading

Fairburn CG, Cooper Z. Therapist competence, therapy quality, and therapist training. Behaviour Research and Therapy 2011; 49: 373-378.

Cooper Z, Doll H, Bailey-Straebler S, Kluczniok D, Murphy R, O'Connor ME, Fairburn CG. The development of an online measure of therapist competence.  Behaviour Research and Therapy 2015; 64: 43-48.