Has the coronavirus taken a toll on your work-life balance?
As a therapist or other mental health professional, working with clients all day can be very tiring, so it’s a must to be able to leave the office at the end of the day, head back home, and relax. Unfortunately, our world has changed due to COVID-19, so this just isn’t possible anymore. During the lockdown, many therapists had to move their practices online; in-person appointments became video conferencing sessions, and homes became offices. This created a crack in the walls between professional and personal lives.
Though things are starting to reopen, you’ll still likely be working from home for a while yet. Here are some ideas about how you can restore your work-life balance while also providing your clients with superior care.
Create a “Workspace” in Your Home
If you want to maintain your usual level of productivity while also being able to escape from work at the end of the day, you’re going to need to create a dedicated workspace in your home.
In your “office,” the only thing you do when you’re there is work. No relaxing, no watching YouTube videos after hours, no browsing the internet. At the end of the day, you leave that workspace and head back to your non-work life.
Creating this artificial boundary between your professional and personal lives will help keep them separate from each other (even if the line is entirely imaginary).
Keep Track of Your Time
It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re working from home. Between family members asking you questions, household chores that need to be done, and other non-work tasks and activities, there are so many distractions when you’re at home.
Owl Practice can help with this with our scheduling and calendar tools. By having your entire day laid out in front of you, you can see which tasks will take up the most time, when you have appointments with clients, and, most importantly, when you should be leaving “work” and going “home.”
Use Owl’s Dedicated Video Therapy Service
The video conferencing industry received a big boost back in March. Suddenly, everyone needed to communicate with their coworkers and clients online. Unfortunately, security wasn’t the first thing many of the online video conferencing companies addressed.
You’ve probably heard stories of strangers randomly popping into video calls uninvited. This lack of security made most of these platforms unsuitable for video therapy. Your clients’ privacy is paramount, so you can’t risk someone dropping in and hearing confidential information.
Enter Owl Practice!
Rather than seeing your clients in person, possibly putting everyone’s health at risk, you can now use Owl Practice’s Video Therapy. We made this service available soon after the pandemic started, and now, we’re going full steam ahead.
Owl Practice offers the only fully PHI and College-Compliant solution for mental health video therapy in Canada. Everything is run exclusively on our dedicated servers in Toronto, so all therapy sessions are fully encrypted between you and your client. Besides that, we also offer couple and family sessions through the platform, allowing you to continue with group therapy sessions.
Our Video Therapy service is multi-platform, meaning that you can use it wherever you find an internet connection. It’s also fully integrated with Owl Practice, helping you save time and giving your clients a much better experience than using other video conferencing platforms.
Trying to maintain a healthy work-life balance at a time like this can seem almost impossible, but with some extra effort (and a few additional tools), you can effectively separate your personal and professional lives. And thankfully, Owl Practice can help!
If you’d like to experience what Owl Practice has to offer, we invite you to book a 14-day free trial or a demo today. If you have any questions or comments about our services and video therapy tools, please contact us at support@owlpractice.ca.
As Always,
Practice Wisely
