Client-centered Counseling Techniques for Healthcare Workers and Helping Professionals

Counseling is an integral part of our service delivery as healthcare workers and helping professionals. Client-centered counseling assists speech-language pathologists in supporting our clients’ emotional and psychological concerns, as they relate to their communication needs and diagnoses.

Here are 8 counseling strategies healthcare workers and helping professionals can incorporate into sessions with their clients, students, and patients to ensure a client-centered approach to care.

1. Initiate

   Establishing a therapeutic relationship is a vital aspect of counseling. client-centered therapeutic focus is best achieved when the clinician reflects the emotional responses of the patient or client

2. Attend

   Incorporate non-verbal "attending" behaviors, non-verbal reinforcers, and minimal verbal encourages. These behaviors, combined, encourage client verbalization and elaboration. Consider cultural variations where appropriate

3. Pause

   Allow and tolerate "clinical" silence. Contrary to popular belief, silence can indicate admiration, agreement, and empathy; additionally, it can encourage client verbalization. A good rule of thumb is to count to 5 before making a comment.

4. Query

   Incorporate and vary the use of "open" and "closed" questions as a secondary interviewing strategy. Whereas open questions allow the client to respond in a variety of ways, closed questions require a particular response.

5. Paraphrase

   Immediately rephrase the content and feelings of the client’s expressions. When followed by interpretation and clarification, paraphrasing can help the client better understand their feelings immediately after they are expressed.

6. Accept

   Reflect on and accept the client's positive and negative feelings. Avoid the urge to instinctively provide assurance when the client expresses negative feelings about their illness, disorder, or circumstances.

7. Summarize

   Condense the content and feelings of the client’s expression. Summarizing is useful when concluding the interview and ensures that the clinician has 1) understood the message and 2) gotten the "big picture."

8. Pace

   Ensure the use of appropriate timing for responses, comments, and questions.

Adapted from "A Counseling Training Module for Students in Speech-Language Pathology Training Programs"