On the Very, Very Frontlines of Mental Health Care

Abstract

The role and training needs of client-facing administrative staff in mental health settings is an underidentified topic in the literature. Although interactions between the medical office staff and clients are not typically defined as therapeutic, patients nevertheless often view client-facing staff as an extension of their physician or care team. These interactions can be both meaningful and important to the overall care experience and should be conceptualized and understood as a legitimate part of the larger healing environment. To this end, the authors propose that a more fulsome understanding is needed of the experiences and impact of administrative staff's role in the larger clinical encounter from the perspectives of both clients and staff. The authors also identify a number of unmet training and support needs for client-facing administrative staff.