Certified Trainers Blog

 Archive for the ‘Deanna Bisaillon’s Posts’ Category

Hello!
Very interesting meeting we had the other week in regards to our agency possibly using tablets instead of laptops! As our agency is beginning to venture into the land of “in-home” supports, we are once again finding ourselves having to use paper documentation as many homes that we serve do not have internet access. Using these tablets will be great as most of the staff working have gotten used to using Therap. In addition, having paper documentation makes it difficult for me as a behavior specialist to do my job outside of that home to do my work and to keep tabs on the behavioral incidents that occur. I guess we have gotten very spoiled with having all the data right at our fingertips! The only trouble I see is that the families still won’t have access as I am assuming that we wouldn’t be leaving the tablets at the house.

Anyway…hope everyone is enjoying the wonderful weather!

Deanna Bisaillon

Happy April Fool’s day!! Hope no one is getting tricked today or is suffering from a sugar coma from yesterday!

The behavior specialists at our agency got some great news last week. Psychiatry dictations/med orders and recommendation pages from previous PRC (program review committe) will be scanned into therap! While this may take a bit of time to compete as scanners still need to be purchased, it will be a wonderful thing to be able to have instant access to those documents. The behavior specialists tend to use those documents a lot and not having to drive all over the state just for those pieces of information will be so much more time-efficient!

This will of course means that I will need to learn yet another form of technology…but from what I hear scanning isn’t so bad! Wish me luck though just in case!!

Enjoy the first week of April!!!

Well…we all survived the Blizzard of 2013! What an incredible amount of prep work winter weather bestows upon us!

I have been hearing all about the conference this year and was once again am sorry to have missed it! However–fingers crossed–I will be back in full conference mode for our annual CT conference in Meriden in September and hopefully for the annual one next year. Attending these conferences really gets you motivated to try new things! At Oak Hill, we have slowed down a bit and are still getting the training piece working for all employees.

Hopefully when I am finished with my new school adventure and my colleague is back in full swing at work we will once again forge ahead to new and excitiing things on Therap!

Deanna

Well…I’ve made the switch…to Dashboard! I hated it at first. I hate change! I made the switch because I wanted to do it on “my terms” and not come into work one day and be forced into it! It has been several weeks and it is not that bad! I wish I could organize it so it works best for me…but overall…not bad!! The only problem I ran into was when I realized that I hadn’t been checking Scomms and ended up with 30 unread ones! To be honest…I didn’t even see the scomm section! I still have to make an effort to remember to look for it though!

I keep telling myself that yes…change is good!!!

Anyway…Merry Christmas everyone and see you in the New Year!!!

Deanna

Yay! Another notch on my belt for a (I think) successful webinar! I again did my webinar on creating, reporting and entering data for BER’s. I also included a little blurb on time tracking. Again…I felt a little weird because it is hard talking to my computer but as I continue to do them, I get a little more confident. One of the differences this time was that some of the people that joined in asked questions and I really liked answering them. It told me that 1) they didn’t get too bored and stayed on the whole time and 2) they were interested and had great questions to ask. I hope for future webinars such questions will occur!

Hope everyone is doing OK with the aftermath of Sandy! Quite a hectic week it was last week!!
Deanna

I was so sad to have missed the annual CT user’s group in in Meriden this year! What made it worse is that last year I was considering doing a presentation in BER’s. Hopefully next year things will calm down and I will be able to once again be surrounded by the CT experts of Therap!!!

From what I have heard – it was a great conference!!!

Happy October everyone!!!
Deanna

This month, while very busy with behavioral issues, crisis situations and the overall craziness that life brings…was generally a slow Therap month for us in terms of development. As I noted last month, we did host and participate in the CT user’s group and hopefully those meetings will resume after the upcomng conference in Meriden.

I am starting to think about data collection again and how best to achieve better data. I am concerned that staff aren’t as descriptive when filling out BER’s and I worry that we are missing key elements such as antecedents.

Anyway…hope everyone has an enjoyable September….looks like the weather will be getting cooler here in CT! Time to start apple picking!!
Deanna

We met again at Oak Hill yesterday for our “monthly” CT user group. It was great to see new faces…especially from Mosaic! They are brand new to Therap (here in CT anyway!) and so we spent a great deal of time discussing ways to start out with Therap focusing on passwords and problems/successes we found with tlogs and scomms.

Not sure I will be able to attend the Meriden CT Conference this year…but what a great way to network and meet new people from different agencies!

Deanna

Happy Summer! It has been very hot here in CT…but we are surviving…sort of!

Not to complain…but…….here goes! I have always been a big proponent of the BER’s however I wish there was a way to separate the BER’s from the Interval data. The interval tracking is very under-used which is sad because it is the perfect interval tracking system. I know everything is “easier said than done”, but if there was one thing I could have in Therap world it is to have those separate. As I sit here, I am wondering who I can beg, plead, etc.??? Maybe if I keep blogging about this???
Haha!!! Enjoy the rest of summer!!!
Deanna

I just completed my second webinar and I am left with similiar feelings as the last one…did I talk too fast, did I sound like a little kid, did I even make sense? Ugh…I still would love to do this with more “audience” participation! I also wonder about have questions at the end…I never get any questions…is that a bad thing?

Anyway…here at Oak Hill we are moving ahead with the training part…slowly but surely!!! Behaviorally speaking, we have started to use the ISP more to record such behavioral data such as “positive behavior supports”, reinforcement and mood states. Although it has been great having so much data at my fingertips…I often wonder if having behavioral pieces “scattered” throughout Therap is helpful to staff. Most data collection takes place in the BER but staff also have to document sleep in the time tracking and now certain aspects in an ISP. I wish we could have all the behavioral components in one place. But hey…nothing is perfect!!!

Have a great June everyone!