Once a month, we hold what is called a Visionary Meeting: a gathering of the different practitioners who offer services and are part of the community here at The Viva Center. The focus of each meeting is brought forward by one of our practitioners who wants to share their experience with a particular client and receive multidisciplinary input from a group of like-minded professionals dedicated to holistic wellness. It is a remarkable intellectual and collaborative experience bringing together over a dozen professionals for the purpose of giving the client an optimal path toward wellness.
At a recent Visionary Meeting, a practitioner shared her experience with a client who was pursuing several different avenues with several different practitioners to overcome chronic pain and the psychological ramifications of that pain. His plight was similar to other distressed people looking to different professionals to help them with the dis-ease and often hoping for some kind of coordination or conversation between these various professionals.
And it is not uncommon for these professionals to coordinate on some level: the appropriate releases are signed and the professionals talk periodically to ensure their mutual client is progressing and reaching goals. Any coordination of treatment by the professionals is often very beneficial to the client’s progress to fill gaps in the treatment of the client’s complex and multifaceted issues. While adjunct treatment has shown to be an effective tool imagine the shifts clients could see if the professionals worked conjointly in their treatment, something that The Viva Center is pioneering.
What is Conjoint Treatment?
Conjoint treatment, that is the practice of performing two different healing modalities at the same time, is sparsely covered in scholarly literature and rarely performed in our healing communities. However a few years ago while working with a client who was also seeing a physical therapist, our founder Dr. Julie Lopez, PhD., LICSW saw the benefits the client was experiencing from seeing the two separately and felt working conjointly in a singular session would result in even better results. She and the physical therapist worked to get board approval, establish best practices, and shortly thereafter, conjoint sessions with the client began. As the conjoint sessions unfolded the positive results were markedly noticeable.
Interested in Learning More?
Here at The Viva Center, this kind of coordination and multidisciplinary approach isn’t just a good idea, it is the foundation of our Mission. Not to say that every client’s treatment is well-suited for Conjoint Therapy but that when a client comes to The Viva Center, although they only see one practitioner on a regular basis, they have over 20 licensed professionals engaged in that individual client’s healing process. See more about our Resulted-Oriented Psychotherapy and other services here.
For holistic professionals, we welcome you to join a group inspired by the success of our Visionary Meetings, that is the Holistic Professionals Group, which meets every third Friday of the month to center around a practice area to learn from and engage in a conversation about providing clients with COMPLETE care.
This month’s HPG meeting will be on Conjoint Treatment and will be facilitated by Julie and the amazing Lisa Klein, PT, IMT-C. They will be sharing their experience and research on how physical therapy and psychotherapy can be used conjointly, the path to getting board approval and establishing best practices, as well as how this unique approach enhances treatment for the client. Explore the possibilities with your colleagues for performing other conjoint treatment arrangements with the spirit of optimizing our treatment toolbox for those we serve.
This workshop is part of the Holistic Workshop Series – a free benefit to Holistic Professionals Group members. Please join this unique group by clicking here. If you are not currently a member of the Holistic Professionals Group, you may drop in to this workshop for $25 by signing up here.
