| The present dissertation is a product development of a resource manual for Marriage and Family Therapy/Psychology graduate students who desire to establish a private practice. The results from the product development were designed to stimulate knowledgeable awareness of essential non-clinical skills needed to establish and maintain a private practice, and to provide graduate MFT/Psychology programs with a didactic-experiential course of study.;Career satisfaction ratings of psychologists continue to remain high (Boyce & Myers, 1987; Stevanovic & Rupert, 2004; Walfish, Polifka & Stenmark, 1991), as do the career satisfaction ratings of independent practitioners (Walfish & Walraven, 2005). Independent practitioners report lower burnout rates, less emotional exhaustion, and greater sense of personal accomplishment than do other practitioners (Raquepaw & Miller, 1989; Rupert & Morgan, 2005; Vredenburgh, Carlozzi & Stein, 1999). However, independent practitioners must consider issues especially related to their practices, in particular, managed care and business and marketing skills.;A growing segment in the field of mental health nationwide, there are 48,000 persons with the MFT license (aamft.org, 2009). Research has indicated that at least half of licensed MFT's work in private practice, and entering private practice after graduation is still a desire for the majority of graduate students (Jarvis, Roberson-Wong & Natrajan-Tyagi, 2007; Phelps, Eisman, & Kohout, 1998). Yet in the literature outlining suggestions for graduate training programs (Brooks & Riley, 1996; Broskowski, 1995; Charous & Cantor, 1996, Cummings, 1995; Patterson, McIntosh-Koonts, Baron, & Bischoff, 1997), essential training for establishing a private practice has remained largely absent from M.A. and Psy.D./Ph.D. education, which in this area has provided inadequate preparation pragmatically to address the skills needed to establish and then to conduct an independent practice.;The purpose of this product development is to provide MFT/Psychology graduate students with a resource manual to facilitate an awareness of the knowledge and skills needed to establish a private practice. In addition, this product development contributes to the training and literature in the field by providing educators and trainers with a body of resource materials.;The study concludes with the resource manual for the MFT/Psychology graduate student. Included in the discussion is a detailed explanation of how the resource manual can be incorporated into a didactic-experiential elective or core course in graduate training programs. |
