Clinical Practice Pracforms Why I Chose Different Way Contribute

Creating more space for the people who care for others.

After more than four decades in nursing and psychology, I've begun a new chapter in my life.

Retirement from clinical practice gave me the freedom to consider what I wanted this next chapter to hold. I no longer felt tied to a particular professional role, but I remained interested in how my experience might be useful.

An idea my husband, Mike, and I had discussed for many years began to feel like a natural possibility. That idea became PracForms.

What clinical practice taught me

My career began in nursing, where I learned the value of attentive, compassionate care. Later, as a clinical psychologist, I worked with people who faced some of life's most difficult experiences.

Both professions taught me that good care requires more than knowledge and technical skill. It calls for careful attention, genuine curiosity and an understanding of the person beyond the presenting problem.

Over time, I also became more aware of the demands placed on those who provide that care.

Mental health practitioners bring considerable knowledge, attention and emotional energy to their work. Alongside their clinical responsibilities, they maintain records, administer assessments, prepare reports, manage correspondence and attend to the everyday demands of private practice.

For practitioners in solo or small practices, these responsibilities often fall on one person. The work doesn't necessarily end when the last client leaves.

I remember how quickly administrative tasks accumulated during a busy week. Client appointments filled the day, while reports, correspondence and records competed for whatever time remained.

Sometimes the work followed me home. Even when I wasn't at my desk, I knew what still needed my attention.

Those experiences shaped how I came to understand practitioner wellbeing.

I've come to see that caring for others and caring for ourselves are closely connected. The conditions in which practitioners work can influence their capacity to be present, attentive and compassionate. Supporting those conditions is another way of supporting good care.

The hidden cost of administration

Good administration forms an essential part of safe, ethical practice. Accurate records, clear communication and reliable methods of assessment all contribute to quality care.

Yet many of these processes take more time and effort than they should.

Psychological outcome measurement offers a good example.

Standardised measures help practitioners understand a client's difficulties, monitor progress and evaluate treatment outcomes. They also inform clinical decisions and support communication with referring doctors.

Research supports their value. A meta-analysis of 58 studies found that feedback about client progress produced a small improvement in treatment outcomes (de Jong et al., 2021).

But a completed questionnaire is only the beginning.

The practitioner must score responses, interpret results, track changes, prepare reports and update records. Often, this means moving between different systems, entering the same information more than once or completing calculations manually.

Researchers have identified these time demands as a practical barrier to routine outcome monitoring (Boswell et al., 2015).

The burden extends beyond the hours spent on administration. Unfinished tasks occupy mental space, interrupt rest and make it harder to switch off.

Research also identifies workload as an important contributor to burnout among mental health professionals (O'Connor et al., 2018; McCormack et al., 2018).

We often encourage practitioners to manage these pressures through self-care, resilience and healthy boundaries. Those strategies matter, but they address only part of the problem.

I don't believe that commitment to caring for others should require practitioners to continually set aside their own needs. Meaningful care should be sustainable, allowing those who provide it to remain connected to their own wellbeing and lives beyond work.

If we want to support practitioner wellbeing, we also need to consider the systems and processes that contribute to unnecessary work.

A different way to contribute

The idea behind PracForms has been part of our conversations for more than ten years.

Throughout my years in private practice, I often shared my frustrations with the administrative demands of clinical work. I wondered why routine tasks required so many separate steps, repeated data entry and additional paperwork.

Surely there was a simpler way to manage information that practitioners already had.

As a software engineer, Mike could see opportunities to simplify those processes. Our conversations gradually turned to what a better system might look like and how we could combine my clinical experience with his technical knowledge.

For years, professional commitments left little time to pursue the idea. Retirement gave us the space to explore it, not because I needed another professional role, but because the work genuinely interested us both.

Advances in technology have also made it easier to develop applications and connect them with existing systems.

Today, we bring our different skills to a shared purpose.

As Co-Founder and Clinical Lead, I draw on my experience in psychological assessment, clinical practice and professional reporting. Mike brings the technical expertise to turn those requirements into working software.

Together, we're developing PracForms, an Australian digital platform designed to simplify psychological outcome measurement and practitioner-reviewed reporting.

Our approach begins with the practitioner's experience rather than the technology itself.

We ask which tasks genuinely support clinical care, which create unnecessary work and how software could make the difference.

We also recognise that the choices made during development matter just as much as the functions a product provides. Technology can simplify work, but it can also create new demands. Our responsibility is to remain conscious of that distinction.

PracForms aims to simplify the collection of assessments, calculation of scores, review of client progress and preparation of reports. We also plan to connect these processes with the practice management systems practitioners already use.

We want to make outcome measurement easier to incorporate into everyday clinical practice without adding another layer of administration.

We want to reduce the demands that take practitioners away from the work they value and the lives they want to live.

Technology that supports people

Technology companies often promise greater productivity. Their products help people work faster, complete more tasks and manage more information.

But productivity isn't the only measure of success.

Can technology make a practitioner's workday easier, calmer and more manageable?

Thoughtfully designed software can reduce repetitive tasks, connect related processes and make information easier to access.

More importantly, it should fit the way practitioners work rather than require them to adapt to another complicated system.

The best tools often work quietly in the background. They simplify necessary tasks without demanding constant attention and leave clinical decisions where they belong — with the practitioner.

Throughout my clinical career, I sought to understand the person beyond their symptoms, diagnosis or assessment scores.

Psychological measures provide useful information, but they never tell the whole story.

A change in a score may indicate improvement or deterioration. Understanding what that change means requires knowledge of the person's circumstances, their experiences and the broader context of their life.

Technology can calculate scores, organise information and present results clearly. It cannot replace clinical experience, professional judgement or the conversations that give those results meaning.

That distinction guides our approach to PracForms.

We also recognise that technology alone cannot solve every challenge mental health professionals face.

We don't yet know whether outcome-measurement software directly reduces practitioner burnout or improves wellbeing. Research will need to answer those questions.

What we can do is develop tools that address identifiable administrative demands and evaluate whether they make a meaningful difference.

For me, the value of technology lies not only in what it helps practitioners accomplish, but also in the freedom and choice it may help restore.

A new chapter

Retirement from clinical practice prompted me to reflect on the connection between our work and our sense of identity.

After decades in a profession, it's easy to define ourselves through what we do. A change in direction can challenge that sense of identity, but it can also open the door to new possibilities.

I've come to understand that our work is one way we express who we are, but it doesn't define the whole of us. The roles we hold may change, while the values and qualities we bring to life remain.

My working life looks very different now.

I no longer sit with clients in a therapy room. Instead, I contribute to the development of tools for the practitioners who continue that work.

PracForms is still in development, and Mike and I have plenty to learn along the way. But the opportunity to combine our experience and explore an idea that matters to us makes this chapter especially meaningful.

We want to simplify outcome measurement and support sound clinical decisions while making everyday work more manageable.

Sometimes that might give a practitioner more time to focus on clients.

Other times, it might mean the freedom to finish work on time, enjoy an evening with family, take a walk or simply rest.

Those things matter too.

After many years of direct work with clients, I now find purpose and enjoyment in supporting the people who continue that important work.

The way I contribute has changed. The values behind it haven't.

References

Boswell JF, Kraus DR, Miller SD, Lambert MJ. Implementing routine outcome monitoring in clinical practice: benefits, challenges, and solutions. Psychotherapy Research. 2015;25(1):6–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/10503307.2013.817696

de Jong K, Conijn JM, Gallagher RAV, Reshetnikova AS, Heij M, Lutz MC. Using progress feedback to improve outcomes and reduce drop-out, treatment duration, and deterioration: a multilevel meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review. 2021;85:102002. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2021.102002

McCormack HM, MacIntyre TE, O'Shea D, Herring MP, Campbell MJ. The prevalence and cause(s) of burnout among applied psychologists: a systematic review. Frontiers in Psychology. 2018;9:1897. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01897

O'Connor K, Muller Neff D, Pitman S. Burnout in mental health professionals: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prevalence and determinants. European Psychiatry. 2018;53:74–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eurpsy.2018.06.003