Of course, if we are currently working together, I will let you know of these times well in advance so that we can work around them and make arrangements if you need additional support at that time.

If you are a new (or returning) patient making contact with me at this time, please understand that it may take me more than 24 hours to get back to you. However, I will have phone and email access and will be happy to schedule an appointment for after my return.

Here are the days I’ll be out:

February 24th – March 5th

March 10th – March 16th

April 7th and 8th

Otherwise, you can expect me to keep my regular office hours, and I do not anticipate any schedule changes until August. I will update my calendar with those dates during the summer.

If you are a regular patient, we will be discussing scheduling when we meet.

Tuesdays: 1pm and 2pm

Thursdays: 12 noon

Fridays: 1pm

If you are interested in becoming a new patient, and you would like one of these times, please contact me to set up an initial consultation.

If you are looking for another time to meet, you should still contact me, as I have flexibility in my schedule and I may be able to accommodate you at another time.

If you are interested in Friday afternoon sessions at 12, 1pm, or 2pm, these times will become available.

If you are a current client, I will update you on the changes and have you sign a new Acknowledgment of Notifications form to indicate that you are aware of these changes when we next meet.

I will still be checking and returning phone messages and emails, but my response time may be delayed.

If you are experiencing a crisis, you should call 911 or go to your nearest Emergency Room.

Last Wednesday, I logged into Gmail to discover that I had a new little Buzz icon. When I clicked on it, I discovered what everyone was tweeting about: I was auto-following a number of people. Some I knew and some I didn’t really know at all. We just happened to be active participants on shared email lists, but we’d never met.  I’d heard the murmurs about Google Buzz, so I knew something was brewing. But what arrived wasn’t what I expected. I certainly wasn’t prepared for the invasive experience of having Google decide for me who I should be following based upon the frequency of our email exchanges. And this was just on my personal email account.

7. Of course, if you use PayPal or have a presence on other sites like Psychology Today on which clients may contact you, switch the email address to your new secure email.

Other resources

For some more Gmail privacy tips, lifehacker has a good post Top 10 Google Settings You Should Know About. Here is another informative post 3 Things You Should Know Before Using (Or Continuing to Use) Google Buzz.

Update: November 2, 2010

Today, Google has notified users of a class action settlement in the lawsuit regarding Google Buzz. An excerpt from their email:

The settlement acknowledges that we quickly changed the service to address users’ concerns. In addition, Google has committed $8.5 million to an independent fund, most of which will support organizations promoting privacy education and policy on the web. We will also do more to educate people about privacy controls specific to Buzz. The more people know about privacy online, the better their online experience will be.

Just to be clear, this is not a settlement in which people who use Gmail can file to receive compensation. Everyone in the U.S. who uses Gmail is included in the settlement, unless you personally decide to opt out before December 6, 2010. The Court will consider final approval of the agreement on January 31, 2011. This email is a summary of the settlement, and more detailed information and instructions approved by the court, including instructions about how to opt out, object, or comment, are available at http://www.BuzzClassAction.com

© 2010 Keely Kolmes, Psy.D.

To cite this page: Kolmes, K. (2010) Email tips for clinicians. Retrieved month/day/year from http://drkkolmes.com/2010/02/18/google-buzz-alarms-therapists/.

Please note that since this original blog post, I have updated my Social Media Policy to include information about location-based check-ins and some other items not mentioned on this page. You are welcome to download the current document.

Other clinicians may copy, share, or adapt this policy to suit your own practice needs, but you may not use this work for commercial purposes. If you use my policy for training or educational purposes, please cite me as the original author.

Thanks to everyone who provided feedback on my first draft. I have slightly modified some sections and added a bit more to this document. I realized that some sections needed a bit more explanation so that clients would understand my rationale for my practice choices. When this policy is final, I will upload it to my forms page and print it up for current clients. As before, I invite anyone to copy or modify this form for their own practice.

This document outlines my office policies related to use of social media. Please read to understand how I conduct myself on the Internet and how you can expect me to respond to various requests and interactions between us.

If a time should come when I revise any of these policies, I will bring an updated copy of this form to our session so that you are aware of any changes.

If you have any questions about anything within this document, I encourage you to bring them up when we meet.

Friending

I do not accept friend requests from current or former clients. This holds true on Facebook, LinkedIn, and all other social networking sites. My reasons for this are that I believe that adding clients as friends on these websites can compromise confidentiality and blur the boundaries of our therapeutic relationship. If you have questions about this, please feel free to bring them up when we meet and I’m happy to talk more about it.

Fanning

I maintain a Facebook Page for my professional practice. I use this Page to allow colleagues to share my blog postings and practice updates within Facebook. All of these articles are also directly available on my website.

While you are always welcome to visit my Facebook Page and read or share articles posted there, I do not allow clients to become Fans of this Page. I believe having clients as Fans of this Page creates an even greater likelihood of compromised client privacy and I do not want others who may look through my list of Fans to find any clients listed. In addition, it is a violation of my professional ethics code to solicit testimonials from clients. I feel that the term “Fan” implies a request for a public endorsement of my practice.

If you are my client and I see that you have become a Fan of my Facebook Page, you can expect me to discuss this with you in-session and request that you remove yourself from my Page. If it will be awhile before our next scheduled meeting, I may remove you myself and I will discuss it with you during our next session.

Please note that you can subscribe to the page via RSS without becoming a Fan and without creating a visible, public link to my Page. You are welcome to do this.

Following

I currently maintain a professional Twitter stream. If you use an easily recognizable (to me) name on Twitter and I notice that you’ve followed me there, you can expect me to bring it up in therapy so that we can briefly discuss it.

My primary concern will be your privacy. There are more private ways to follow me on Twitter (such as subscribing using an RSS feed or using a locked Twitter list), which would eliminate your having a public link to my content. But you are welcome to use your own discretion in choosing whether to follow me. There is nothing I post here that I would not want you to see.

Please note that I will not follow you back.

I do not follow current or former clients on blogs or Twitter. If there are things you wish to share with me from your online life, I strongly encourage you to bring them into our sessions where we can process them together, during the therapy hour.

Interacting

Please do not use messaging on websites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to contact me. These sites are not secure and I may not read these messages in a timely fashion. If you need to contact me between sessions, the best way to do so is by phone. Direct email at drkkolmes [at] gmail is second best for quick, administrative issues such as changing appointment times. Please see the email section below for more information regarding email interactions.

Use of Search Engines

It is NOT a regular part of my practice to search for clients on Google or other search engines. Extremely rare exceptions to this may be made during times of crisis. If I have a reason to suspect that you are in danger and you have not been in touch with me via our usual means (coming to appointments, phone, or email) there may be a circumstance in which using a search engine (to find you, find someone close to you, or to check on your status) becomes necessary as part of ensuring your welfare. These are extremely rare situations and if I resort to such means, I will document it and discuss it with you when we next meet.

Google Reader

I do not follow current or former clients on Google Reader. I also do not use this account to share articles with current or former clients. I share many links of interest via my Twitter account, which you are welcome to read. If there are things you want to share with me that you feel are relevant to your treatment, I encourage you to bring these items of interest into our sessions.

Business Review Sites

There are a number of different websites including Yelp and Healthgrades, on which you may find my practice information. Many of these sites comb search engines for business listings and automatically add listings. If you should find my listing on these sites, please know that my listing on any of these sites is NOT a request for a testimonial or endorsement from you as my client.

The American Psychological Association’s Ethics Code states under Principle 5.05 that it is unethical for psychologists to solicit testimonials: “Psychologists do not solicit testimonials from current therapy clients/patients or other persons who because of their particular circumstances are vulnerable to undue influence.”

Of course, you have a right to express yourself on any site you wish, but due to confidentiality, I cannot respond to any review on any of these sites whether it is positive or negative. I urge you to take your own privacy as seriously as I take my commitment of confidentiality to you.

If we are working together, it is my hope that you will bring your feelings and reactions to our work directly into the therapy process. This can be an important part of therapy, even if you decide we are not a good fit. If you still choose to write something on a business review site, then please remember this is a public forum on which you could be sharing personally revealing information. I urge you to create a pseudonym that is not linked to your regular email address or friend networks.

Lastly, none of this means that you cannot share that you are in therapy with me wherever and with whomever you like. Confidentiality means that I cannot tell people that you are my client and my ethics code prohibits me from requesting testimonials. But you are more than welcome to tell anyone you wish that I’m your therapist in any forum of your choosing.

Email

I prefer to use email only to arrange or modify appointments. Please do not use email to send content related to your therapy sessions, as email is not completely secure or confidential. If you choose to communicate with me by email, please be aware that all emails are retained in the logs of your and my Internet service providers. While it is unlikely that someone will be looking at these logs, they are, in theory, available to be read by the system administrator(s) of the Internet service provider. You should also know that any email I receive from you and any responses that I send to you will be printed out by me and kept in your treatment record.

Yesterday, I posted a draft of my Social Media Policy for Psychotherapy on this blog. I also included a link on Twitter. I made it clear that this was a work in progress and asked folks to feel free to comment or suggest additions. Of all the public and private feedback I received, the section of my policy that garnered the most criticism was the part about deleting clients who become “Fans” of my Facebook Page. I appreciate the feedback, and I may modify the language of this section to soften it a bit. I also need to add sections on use of pseudonyms by both therapist and client and on consumer review sites such as Yelp and Google and Yahoo Business.

Thank you to @susangiurleo and @TriBeCaTherapy over on Twitter for some different perspectives and for raising questions about how it might affect a client to be deleted as a “Fan” from a therapist’s Page. I certainly don’t want for a client to feel hurt or rejected. The very reason I’m creating a Social Media Policy in the first place–and discussing it with clients–is to minimize the potential for such feelings of rejection. I’m making it extremely clear that this policy is universal for all clients and not personal. I’m also explaining my rationale. I want this information to be clear and accessible before such events transpire so that it’s not a mystery as to how I’ll respond. Thus far, I haven’t ever been in a position to have to delete a client from my Facebook Page. I suspect that this is because I work mostly with fairly media savvy adults who care about their privacy. Most who have any interest in my social media presence know how to access it while still retaining their privacy. But this could easily change.

I was asked why I would even create a Facebook Page if I did not wish for clients to become “Fans.” Great question. First, I am fascinated by social media and I swim in it, explore it, teach and write about it. Other clinicians consult with me both in terms of creating and modifying their own social media presence and to better understand how clients may engage online. I also work with clients who live and breathe on the Internet. It’s fairly impossible to specialize in this arena without beta testing things now and then in order to understand how they work from the inside. I also wanted to experiment with Facebook ads (which I’m no longer using) to see if I found them effective for advertising my practice. My Page was one way to attract potential clients to my content, and ultimately, my website.

I initially had strong concerns about establishing a Facebook Page because I worried that my only “Fans,” would be friends and family members and this brought up concerns about my own privacy! And yet, these were the best people to help me first experiment with the Page. I do still have some friends and family members as “Fans” of my Facebook Page. But I now also have people as “Fans,” who are trusted colleagues, clinicians in other cities who I’ve never met, and others who do not practice psychotherapy who just found and appreciate my posts. My Facebook Page allows others to read and share my postings within Facebook, which is nice for those who don’t use RSS feeds, regularly read blogs, or use Twitter.

Back to those who did not like my position on declining to have clients as “Fans.” It was pointed out that clients are grown-ups and I should not be making this decision for them. This is a valid point, but it raises some issues. Grown-up (and non-grown-up) clients may think a lot of things are okay that don’t feel okay to me in my clinical practice. Some of those things might include socializing or exchanging casual emails between sessions or feeling less concerned about the state of my record-keeping. Yes, despite my own commitment to maintaining client confidentiality, my clients themselves can choose to reveal they are in therapy with me whenever and to whomever they choose. However, this does not relieve me of my ethical obligations regarding confidentiality, or grant me permission to solicit client endorsements.

Sure, my clients are grown-ups, but I am also a grown-up running a clinical practice, and as such, I also have a right (and a responsibility) to establish policies and procedures that feel appropriate to me. My Facebook Page is part of my business and I get to set up how I’d like to conduct business on that Page. If a client wishes to disclose their therapeutic relationship with me, they always have the right and ability do so on their own Pages, profiles, blogs, or accounts.

One person said that I should not deny clients the kind of access that anyone else on the Internet has access to which was interesting. However, I am not actually limiting anyone’s access to my professional practice content or information in any way at all. Every piece of this information is on a public Page and “Fans” and “non-Fans” have the same access to it. I’m neither blocking them from accessing the Page nor preventing them from reading anything my other “Fans” can view. They can still see it, read it, share it with others, save it, and so on. The only thing they are unable to do is publicly link themselves to my Page. I fail to see how this is hurtful to a client.

I am not a rock star. I do not need my clients to be my “Fans,” particularly on a site which already has an unstable track record in regard to user privacy. The way I see it, other than the positive interpersonal exchange (pride, recognition, and other warm feelings between client and therapist), the person who stands to benefit the most from getting clients as “Fans,” on their practice Page is actually the therapist. By not accepting clients as “Fans,” I’m taking a stand against cavalier privacy policies in exchange for lower numbers. I’m willing to forgo a few extra “Fans” of my practice on Facebook if the trade-off is that those who might be curious about my clients are being told unequivocally: “You will not find people on this Page who are in treatment with me.”

Hopefully, I’m not short-changing my therapeutic relationships of the positive interactions that can still happen off of Facebook and in my actual office when clients admit that they had a desire to “Fan” or link to me. Other clients simply make mention of my blog or Twitter postings that had special meaning to them and in this way we can together acknowledge their care and interest in my work outside of the therapy room without them having to publicly endorse my presence on a website. Clearly, a client doesn’t have to be a “Fan” or “Follower” for us to both find value in these exchanges and work with the transference privately, within the walls of my office.

The beauty of office agreements and policies is that we all get to craft policies that reflect our own unique beliefs and values as clinicians. If you have a different stance on social media, patient privacy, or clinical care, then by all means create a social media policy that works for you and your practice. It would delight me to see other mental health professionals sharing different policies and agreements so that these can be accessible to clients who would like to know about your specific rules and boundaries. It would also allow clients to self-select clinicians whose policies best match their own beliefs and values. I think it would also be useful to other mental health professionals crafting their own policies to see a variety of practices related to different clinical perspectives and theoretical orientations.

Of course, I am still welcoming commentary on my own Social Media Policy which I know will evolve along with changes in the Internet. So if you have feedback, please share it via email or on Twitter.

Update: June 6, 2010

As of April, Facebook changed the “Become a Fan,” button to a “Like” button. While the terminology of the action of endorsing a page has changed, my beliefs about the problems inherent with clients “Liking” your business page on Facebook remain the same.

© 2010 Keely Kolmes, Psy.D.

To cite this page: Kolmes, K. (2010) I’m not a rock star! (More thoughts on Facebook fanning). Retrieved month/day/year from http://drkkolmes.com/2010/01/26/im-not-a-rock-star-more-thoughts-on-facebook-fanning/.

Please note that this is currently a work in progress. There may be important things to add to this policy, but this is my first draft. If you have any comments or suggestions or think something is missing, please directly email me.

Also, anyone is welcome to use or adapt this form to your own practice. I know that many practitioners adopt different stances than my own when it comes to how they manage clinical care and their social media policy. Please consider making your own policies readily available to your clients so that it is clear and documented, even if your approach is to take it case-by-case.

Friending

I do not accept friend requests from current or former clients. This holds true on Facebook and LinkedIn and all other social networking sites. My reasons for this stance are that I believe that adding clients as friends can compromise confidentiality and blur the boundaries of our therapeutic relationship. If you have questions about this, please feel free to bring it up in-session and I’m happy to talk more about it.

Fanning

I maintain a Facebook page for my professional practice. I do not allow clients to become fans of this page because I believe there is an even greater likelihood of compromised client privacy and I do not want others who may look through my fans to assume you are my client.

If you are my client and I see that you have become a fan of my Facebook page, you can expect me to delete you as a fan and bring it up in our session when I see you next.

Please note that you will always be able to view all my Page content without becoming a fan or you can subscribe to the page via RSS without creating a visible, public link to my Page.

Following

I currently keep a professional Twitter stream and a blog on my practice website. If you use an easily recognizable (to me) name and I notice that you’ve followed me on Twitter, you can expect me to bring it up in therapy so that we can briefly discuss it.

My primary concern will be how it relates to your own privacy. There are more private ways to follow me on Twitter (such as subscribing using an RSS feed) which would eliminate your having a public link to my content. But you are welcome to use your own discretion in choosing whether to follow me. There is nothing I post here that I would not want you to see.

Please be aware that I will not follow you back.

I do not follow current or former clients on blogs or Twitter. If there are things you wish to share with me from your online life, I strongly encourage you to bring them into our sessions where we can process them together, during the therapy hour.

Interacting

I do have a professional presence on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I also keep a blog. You are always welcome to read my content on these sites if it is of interest to you. But please do not use these sites to send me messages or to interact with me outside of treatment. If you need to contact me between sessions, the best way is by phone. Email is second best, but only for quick, administrative issues such as changing appointment times. Please see the email section below for more information regarding email interactions.

Use of Search Engines

It is NOT a regular part of my practice to search for clients on Google or other search engines. Exceptions to this may be made during times of crisis. If I have a reason to suspect that you are in danger and you have not been in touch with me via our usual means (coming to appointments, phone, email) there may be a circumstance in which using a search engine to find another party close to you or seeing if you have or have posted to a blog, Facebook page, or Twitter may become necessary as part of checking on your welfare. These are extremely rare situations and If I ever resort to such means, I will definitely discuss this with you when we next meet.

Google Reader

I do not follow current or former clients on Google Reader. I also do not use this account to share articles with current or former clients. I share many links of interest via my Twitter account which you are welcome to read and I encourage you to bring your own items of interest into our sessions if there are things you want to share with me that you feel are relevant to your treatment.

Email

I prefer to use email only to arrange or modify appointments. Please do not use email to send content related to your therapy sessions, as email is not completely secure or confidential. If you choose to communicate with me by email, please be aware that all emails are retained in the logs of your and my internet service providers. While it is unlikely that someone will be looking at these logs, they are, in theory, available to be read by the system administrator(s) of the internet service provider. You should also know that any email I receive from you, and any responses that I send to you, will be printed out by me and kept in your treatment record.