Acadia University School of Education

Master of Education (Counselling)

Practicum Guidelines

Documenting Practicum Experience

1. A direct client contact hour is a clock hour. This may actually be a 50-minute client/patient hour, but is calculated by actual hours, not quarter hours nor semester hours nor number of hours/week multiplied by number of weeks in the term. In schools, where counselling hours may be shorter, interns might, in consultation with the university supervisor, combine more than one session to equal a practicum hour.

2. Direct Services are actual clock hours in direct service to clients/patients. This section is subdivided by: a) direct intervention, classified by treatment, by format (i.e., individuals, couples, families, groups); b) assessment activity, classified as formal psychometric and interview/observation/diagnostic techniques; and c) formal consultation and primary prevention services rendered, including outreach and psycho-educational activities. These divisions are meant to be mutually exclusive and hours should not be double-counted across sections. The sum of all the subdivisions should equal the Subtotal of Direct Service Hours. Time spent in activities related to the client/patient but not in the actual presence of the client/patient is recorded as Indirect Services.

3. Indirect Services

For students in training, time spent outside the counselling/therapy hour focused on the client/patient is vital learning time. Whether the activity is report writing, preparing process notes, or video/audio tape review, time spent contemplating the client and planning interventions is necessary for a rich learning process.
Document the more quantifiable activities of report-writing, information consultation with other professionals on specific cases, video/audio tape review, and assessment scoring and write-ups.

4. Practicum Supervision

Supervision is broken into one-to-one and group supervision.
Hours are defined as regularly scheduled, face-to-face individual supervision with the specific intent of dealing with counselling services rendered by the student.
The hours recorded in the group supervision category should be actual hours of group focus on specific cases.