East Bay HIV/STI Case Management Manual

Author: Georgia Schreiber

As a case manager, skill building comes from on-the-job experience with clients and colleagues, and if you are lucky, your job will provide access to formal trainings, case conferencing among coworkers, and one-on-one supervision. In some jobs, however, there may not be colleagues on site with similar enough training to provide informal or formal advice on your work. In some cases, your manager may not have the experience to give you helpful guidance, either. This section will discuss different types of professional growth and opportunities for case managers that you can seek out even if they are not offered to you where you work.

Case conferencing

Case conferencing means getting together with colleagues who provide similar or adjacent services, where everyone can present examples of current cases and get advice and different perspectives from the group. 

Case conferencing has multiple benefits for the case manager, including learning from coworkers, experiencing interdisciplinary perspectives, building useful relationships with colleagues, learning best practices, and upholding standards of care for clients. 

Best practices

If case conferencing is available at your organization, it could include colleagues with cases of their own, any supervisors or coworkers with the same or more experience, and sometimes authorities in the kinds of challenges facing your clients. 

• Meet regularly. This could be daily, weekly, semiweekly, monthly, or quarterly. Meeting regularly gives case managers a sense of support and the ability to plan for their case presentations.
• Have a standard presentation format and time frame for the case presentations. 
• Give every member of the group regular and equal opportunities to present cases.
• Establish ground rules for constructive communication and advice giving among the group members.
• Include group members from a variety of relevant disciplines, whenever possible. 

Preparing and presenting a case

Before you present a case to your colleagues, prepare an outline with certain details to present to the group and make sure your presentation will be concise and fit the time limit. The group can agree on a standard format for case presentation, usually including the following elements: 

• Basic demographic information about client
• History of how the client came to the organization and description of general rapport between client and case manager
• Problem history
• What techniques, tasks, and referrals case manager has already employed in this case
• Successes and challenges of case manager working with this client so far
• Specific strengths and challenges of client toward reaching their goal
• Specific problem or point in progress case manager wants help from the group to solve

Clinical Supervision

The purpose of clinical supervision is to meet with a supervisor who has more training and experience in your field and can advise and encourage you on challenges with particular cases. A clinical supervision meeting presents an opportunity for the clinical supervisor to know what your caseload and work style are like. 

Ideally, the clinical supervisor would have a higher level of responsibility than the case manager, could offer support to the case manager generally, and would bear some of the responsibility if bad outcomes occur with a case.

How to get the most out of clinical supervision

It is helpful to develop a positive rapport with your clinical supervisor and set a regular meeting time for clinical supervision. Anytime you have a clinical supervision meeting, even if it is not regularly scheduled or is only regarding one case, be prepared to present to your clinical supervisor the same case history details and specific questions that you would share at a case presentation in a group. 

If your clinical supervisor has any quirks, anticipating them in your delivery of information may help get the most out of one-on-one meetings.

Accessing technical assistance

If you need expert or experienced technical assistance beyond a formal case conference or meeting with a clinical supervisor, you may be able to ask a colleague with specific experience for informal advice. 

Keep HIPAA and client privacy in mind: If you reach out to a colleague outside your group, be sure to change or omit details that would identify your client. If you are speaking with a friendly colleague, it can be tempting to relax this standard, but do not. Protect client confidentiality first and foremost. 

If you realize you want more training on certain issues or common client problems, research available trainings and ask for your organization’s support to attend. If there is no budget for outside or extra trainings, there still may be ways to get the experience. Find another organization that will let you shadow their staff, or find someone who will speak to you informally about their expertise.  

Takeaways and Tips for Case Managers

• Consult and adopt standard guidelines for case presentations in your organization.
• Cultivate and practice advanced communication techniques for working with coworkers and managers to help make case conferencing and clinical supervision meetings productive.
• Ask for and seek out more training in areas you feel especially interested in or where you want to gain more experience.
  

References

• Article, “Case Presentations and the ASWB Exam (Including Templates!)”, Agents of Change, April 26, 2023 at agentsofchangeprep.com