Q. MY ACADEMIC PROGRAM WAS KIND OF ABSTRACT AND NOT ALWAYS VERY PRACTICAL OR REALISTIC. MOST OF WHAT I’VE LEARNED ABOUT CLINICAL PRACTICE I LEARNED IN MY INTERNSHIPS FROM SUPERVISORS AND COLLEAGUES. WHICH PERSPECTIVE SHOULD I TAKE IN APPROACHING MY LICENSE EXAMS?
A. Take the realistic approach. License exam questions are generally written by members of your profession who are currently in direct clinical practice. License exam developers do not seek exam questions from academicians, many of whom have little if any direct clinical experience. Nor do they seek exam questions from program administrators. They generally want these exams to be a kind of peer review, written by people who hold and actually use the license for which you are being tested.
That’s why Berkeley Training Associates does not take an academic approach to training, and we are not affiliated with any university. Our associates have substantial direct clinical experience in applying the clinical knowledge and skills we teach. Our license exam preparation materials, publications for clinical practice, and staff development programs draw heavily upon this extensive, community based, direct service and training experience.
Q. HOW MUCH TIME SHOULD I SPEND ON EXAM PREPARATION?
A. It varies from person to person, depending on...
How clinically oriented and realistic was your educational course work?
Have your supervisors been articulate practitioners who’ve expected you to validate your clinical impressions, articulate the basis for your clinical decisions, and describe the therapeutic relationship process as it develops between you and your clients?
Have you gained experience in a variety of fields of practice?
Have you had opportunities to develop self-awareness for clinical practice by participating in psychotherapy or other practices designed to enhance self-exploration and personal growth?
To what extent have you kept up to date by reading journals, books and participating in continuing education courses?
At Berkeley Training Associates we have found from our nationwide surveys that successful exam candidates spend an average of about 50 to 60 hours working with Home Study Course materials in preparation for their license exams. If you are in California where a second, "Clinical Vignette Exam" is required, you should probably spend some additional time getting familiar with the more complex style of questions used in this exam.
Q. WHAT DO YOU FIND THAT SUCCESSFUL EXAM CANDIDATES HAVE IN COMMON?
A. Successful exam candidates tend to relate the information they’re studying to their actual clinical practice. Our customers often send us comments such as "I sure wish they had taught me this in school." They say that their exam prepartion has helped them become more thorough in their diagnostic formulations, more comprehensive yet focused in their psychosocial assessments, and more articulate and confident about the basis for their clinical decision making.
If you’re finding that your exam preparation studies seem academic, abstract, and unrelated to the work you do with actual clients, or if you find that your exam preparation amounts to an assortment of test taking tricks, then you’re probably missing something.
It's clear that the best preparation for clinical license exams is not primarily about the exams. And it's not primarily about memorizing lists of acronyms or isolated bits of information off of flash cards. It's about clinically meaningful preparation for a high standard of professional practice. Exam candidates who get this point tend to do much better on their license exams than those who miss it.
Q. MY SUPERVISOR IS VERY CREATIVE, INSIGHTFUL AND SUPPORTIVE, BUT I’M NOT SURE SHE’S HELPING ME LEARN WHAT I NEED TO KNOW FOR MY LICENSE EXAM. ANY SUGGESTIONS?
A. Encourage your supervisor to...
- ask you to identify alternative possible diagnoses and treatment planning options
- ask you to explain why you consider your diagnostic conclusions and treatment planning decisions to be better than the alternative options
- identify assessment, diagnostic and treatment options that you had not considered
- explain and demonstrates clinical skills, then give you opportunities to practice, then give you feedback about how well you are applying the specific skills
- use systematic frameworks to review the work that you’re doing with clients, rather than only having "free form," intuition based discussions
- support a "sense of direction" by helping you to identify how your assessment findings lead to a case formulation and diagnosis which leads to treatment planning decisions which lead to a choice of intervention strategy which leads to a choice of intervention techniques which leads to progress evaluation and eventual achievement of goals and/or termination
This kind of supervision has structure and substance. These qualities are enhanced when supervisors and supervisees enter into a well-formulated "Learning Plan" or "Learning Contract." For more information about a well structured approach to your clinical learning see... SUPERVISION FOR LICENSE EXAM SUCCESS
A. WHAT IF MY SUPERVISOR IS UNWILLING OR UNABLE TO TAKE THIS APPROACH?
Q. If your supervisor is willing to take a more structured approach to supporting your license exam preparation, BTA consultants are available to help him or her learn how to use your BTA Home Study Course materials in relation to your clinical supervision. This consultation is made available on a complimentary basis at no charge to you or your supervisor. We do this because so many clinical supervisors have let us know how much they appreciate the well organized and practical assessment frameworks, differential diagnosis tools, lists of practice principles, and treatment planning guides available through BTA. It makes their job easier, and it enriches your clinical supervision and the quality of service provided to your clients.
If your supervisor is unwilling to take such an approach, or unable to make sufficient time available to you, you can still learn a lot by building some structure into your study sessions with other exam candidates. The kind of "Learning Plan" that serves to structure supervision can work just as well to structure study with your peers.
Q. WHERE IS THE LICENSING BOARD COMING FROM? WHAT'S THEIR "SPIN"?
A. Most licensing boards see their primary function as "consumer protection." Their function is to determine whether or not their licensees have sufficient knowledge and skill to practice (1) safely, (2) effectively, and, at certain licensure levels, (3) independently. They are not primarily interested in insight, intuition, or creativity, except to the extent that such qualities are directly related to safe, effective, and independent practice. And they are not supposed to be interested in promoting any particular theoretical orientation.
Practicing safely involves being able to recognize indicators of clinical risk, assess the nature of these risks, evaluating the severity of these risks, and take effective measures to manage these risks.
Practicing effectively involves having a "sense of direction" to one’s work in which the presenting problem leads to a comprehensive biopsychosocial assessment which leads to a diagnostic formulation which leads to a treatment plan which leads to a relevant treatment strategy using relevant treatment technique. This leads to progress evaluation which leads to either modifying the treatment plan, intervention strategy, or termination. Practicing effectively also involves being familiar with the findings of empirical studies and evidence based practices.
Practicing independently involves having sufficient knowledge of ethics, common practitioner biases and countertransferences, and the limitations of one’s scope of practice and scope of competence so that you don’t need a supervisor to be looking over your shoulder to remind you of these issues.
When approaching license exam questions it is best to ask yourself "which answer is supported by evidence, the ethical standards of my profession, and the broad community standard of practice of my profession?
Q. IS IT BEST TO WORK WITH PRACTICE EXAMS ON A COMPUTER OR PRINTED IN A BOOK?
A. There are advantages to each approach.
Printed Practice Examinations allow you to thoroughly study the material. You can highlight important points, put "Post-Its" on the sections you want to return to, underline key concepts, or make notes in the margins. Also, printed Practice Exams are very portable. You can study at the kitchen table or at your desk, in the coffee room at your office or out in the back yard.
BTA's Computer based Practice Exams, now available online via the Internet, give you an opportunity to become familiar with the format and procedures used in actual computer based license exams. They also have the advantage of automatically scoring your exams by giving you both your total score and your score in each exam Content Area. Just as in the actual exams, BTA SkillMaster® Practice Exams also have a timer on the screen that you can use to pace yourself.
Most customers prefer the printed version of the Practice Exams. They find that it's easy enough to time themselves with a watch, and they value the ability to make notes right on the Practice Exam pages. And they've learned from other exam candidates that the computer format used in the actual exam is very easy to figure out and easy to use.
In either case, with BTA the choice is yours. And if you would like to obtain BTA Practice Exams in both formats you can do that too. The second version can be purchased at less than half price (only $50.
Q. DOES BTA PROVIDE FLASHCARDS FOR EXAM PREPARATION?
A. BTA has not used flashcards because they are not well suited to the nature of the exam.
Although flashcards can be useful at the social work Bachelor's exam level, all license exams based on post-graduate education are designed to test a candidate's ability to synthesize, evaluate and apply clinical knowledge and skills to clinical case situations. Flashcards are helpful for rote memory of definitions or lists of concepts, but the exam isn't designed to test rote memory. Although learning by rote memory can be comforting, it doesn't help much with exam performance.
If you need to learn definitions, customers who like to use flashcards have told us that they found it easy to make their own. They take 3X5 cards and go through our Workbook to find the concepts and practice principles that they then put on the cards. They've said that the process of writing their own cards helped them to learn the material much better than if they had simply read flashcards that were written by someone else.
Q. WHY SHOULD I CHOOSE BERKELEY TRAINING ASSOCIATES FOR MY LICENSE EXAM PREPARATION?
A. With BTA you have options...you can order the materials that best meet your needs and learning style. Purchase a Complete Home Study Course or purchase the specific components that you most need. If you're not sure what you most need, order a set of Practice Examinations first and take inventory of your relative strengths and weaknesses. Call for a complimentary phone consultation and ask the questions you most need answered. Purchase your Practice Examinations printed in a book, or on computer disc, or both. And if you do prefer to study with computer based Practice Exams, BTA's SkillMaster® program is provided to you online via the Internet. You will have a full five months (additional months can be purchased at a nominal cost) to take the exam as many times as you wish.
Sometimes a customer will ask "Why should I purchase your Home Study Course when someone else offers a pass guarantee." It appears that others who have offered such a "pass guarantee" have discontinued this practice. If any still do, consider that a "pass guarantee" is actually a refund guarantee, and nobody offers an unconditional "pass guarantee." Look at all of the conditions applied to the refund guarantee. Note whether it applies to the full cost of your purchase, or does it apply only to certain aspects of your purchase? And note whether or not you have to give back all of your materials (with all of your highlighting, underlining, and study notes in the margins) in order to claim your refund. You'll see why so many people who think they will qualify for a "pass guarantee" never claim their refund.
Above all, it is the quality of BTA publications and services that has been the basis for our success. That's how we have become the most respected name in clinical license exam preparation. See for yourself. Like our other customers, we're sure that you will find BTA publications and services to be...
- clearly presented
- well organized
- easy to use
- thorough
- and effective
