Most onboarding goes wrong by overestimating what a new clinician absorbs in week one. They are introduced to twenty people, given access to seven systems, and shadowed on three sessions. By Friday they cannot remember anyone’s name and have not internalised any of the practice's actual rhythms. A slower, more deliberate onboarding pays back tenfold.
Week 1 — Settle the operational floor
- Tour the practice. Meet everyone. No clinical work yet.
- Set up systems access. Walk them through Carelyt with a real (test) client.
- Walk through the intake-to-discharge journey of one fictional client end-to-end.
- Read the goal-writing standard, the session-note expectations, and the supervision policy.
Week 2 — Co-pilot, do not solo
They observe one of yours. You observe one of theirs (with a borrowed client or roleplay). They write a session note with you reviewing it. You write one with them reviewing it. The reciprocity is the thing — it builds trust faster than any policy document.
Week 3 — Take a small caseload
Six to eight clients, hand-picked to be representative but not the hardest. A mix of urgency, age, family complexity. The new clinician’s first independent caseload should be a learning surface, not a stress test. Their supervisor should be checking in twice that week, not once.
Week 4 — Open the conversation
End the month with a 90-minute conversation. What is working? What is broken? What did we miss? What do you want to learn next? Take notes. Act on three things. The conversation signals that you actually care about iteration; that signal compounds.
Things you will be tempted to skip
- Reading their resume properly before they start. Do it.
- Setting them up in the systems before day one. Otherwise day one is a help-desk ticket queue.
- Telling them how supervision works in week one. They will need it by week three.
- Telling them what your discharge standard is. If they discharge differently, the practice splits in two.