A Day in the Life of a Growing Art Therapy Practice

Below is the description of an assumed ‘average’ day for a therapist. There is a range of responsibilities and tasks that a therapist is required to do over a longer period of time. This involves tasks that may occur weekly, monthly, or on an annual basis. Those less regular tasks are not included in this snapshot view of an average day.

For a growing private practice, the client load will be growing yet may be less than an established practice. As a result, the tasks for a growing private practice will need to find a balance between meeting the needs of a growing client base, as well as implementing marketing techniques to find new clients.

A therapist in a growing private practice may start to feel the strain of their business expanding. This could mean some tasks should now be outsourced to an administrative assistant or other third party marketing services.

As a private practice grows, the sole therapist will need to add more tasks and remove others in order to maintain a healthy balance in their client work and business related tasks.

​*Disclaimer: this snapshot view of a day in the life of a therapy practice is based on the assumption the practice is run by a sole practitioner. Larger therapy practices may involve different activities.

Hopefully you have established good client management systems when you first started your private practice. As a growing practice that is gaining more clients, you may find your systems tested to cope with managing multiple clients.

Some parts of your system may not be able to cope with the increase in client work. This might require an investment of funds to introduce a new and more streamlined system.

It’s important to remember that growing a private practice involves some growing pains. This represents an opportunity to adapt to the new parameters of your practice with the understanding that an investment in your business will deliver rewards through a more efficient way of doing things.

Be flexible and remember, that you are forging a new path ahead that you have not walked before. Self-compassion is key at this point of your practice.

• 5 clients today
• Client work admin

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It’s important to undertake regular self-care to benefit both your personal life and your professional life. Developing good self-care practices helps to reduce burnout that is experienced by professionals within the mental health industry.

Supervision may also be considered a part of your self-care, however, it is an important part of your work as a therapist. It can be included as self-care for the purposes of identifying it separately from client work and business tasks.

• Meditation and breathing practice
• 30 min walk
• Supervision appointment

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Private practice administration work refers to the tasks that are considered a part of your private practice operations. It is work that keeps the office running. As a new private practice, this category of work is essential as it forms the foundation on which your private practice will operate.

• Review email from Sue (admin assistant) to respond to any client requests
• Client work admin
• Email Sue with a request for a client policy manual and updates to client intake forms
• Approve art therapy psychoeducation handouts

If you need help to establish the systems for your private practice, you may like to purchase our Admin Package that is available in the store here.

This package provides the foundations of the most common administrative tasks to run your practice.

The package includes 4 major sections:

• BUSINESS ADMIN – these documents focus on the daily grind of your business including centralising important business information, establishing your financial and legal policies, and utilising calendars to help keep you on track on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis.
• BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT – these documents will help you establish the foundation of why you started your own practice. You can use these documents to discover your business goals and then create a strategy to help you achieve your goals. A project template is included to help you get started on your next successful project.
• CLIENT ADMIN – these documents will help you manage information and obligations to your clients, including consent, privacy, information requests, and establishing a social media policy in an ever-growing digital world.
• EMAIL AND LETTER TEMPLATES – these templates will help you communicate professionally with clients and other 3rd parties about the most common and difficult requests.

These items listed under private practice tasks is the work you need to undertake to build your private practice over the long term. It is any work that is considered outside of your operational tasks.

These items are usually based on forward planning as you develop the products and services that your private practice will offer to clients.

• Liaise with Sue about Facebook Advertising
• Set up Sue on a payment system

For more articles that relate to planning and organizing within your therapy practice, check out our previous blog posts listed below:

Blog posts from the same series:
A Day in the Life of a New Art Therapy Practice

ART THERAPY BLOG POSTS

• Practice Management Software to Use as an Art Therapist
• Professional Networking for An Art Therapist
• Self-care for the Art Therapist
• Using Art Therapy For Your Own Self-Care
• Where to find Clients for your Art Therapy Practice

MARKETING BLOG POSTS

• 5 Essential Marketing Templates for your Therapy Practice
• Create A Sales Funnel for an Art Therapist
• How to Build an Email List for your Therapy Practice
• How to Create a Free Offer to Build Your Email List
• Link List: Online Marketing Courses to Improve Your Marketing Skills
• The Best Marketing Methods for Art Therapists
• Understand the Marketing Cycle of Your Art Therapy Practice
• What to do when you have no clients booked
• How to Establish Your Business Network

PLANNING BLOG POSTS

• 10 Steps to Set Up Your Art Therapy Practice
• How to Plan Your Marketing Strategies

INCOME BLOG POSTS

• 10 Ways to Increase Your Therapist Income
• A One Page Business Plan for Your Therapy Practice
• Create a Revenue Strategy for a Therapy Practice
• Excel vs Accounting Software To Record Financial Information
• How to Record Income and Expenses for your Art Therapy Practice
• Marketing to Your Clients Using Email
• Strategies to Increase Profit For Your Therapy Practice

SIGN UP below to download the FREE Planner Template to help plan your Private Practice activities.