Challenges of using progress monitoring measures: insights from practicing clinicians

Although integrating progress monitoring (PM) measures into psychotherapy practice can provide numerous benefits, including improved client outcomes, relatively few clinicians use these measures (e.g., Ionita & Fitzpatrick, 2014). To better understand the reasons for clinicians’ reluctance, consensual qualitative research methodology was used to examine the challenges faced by clinicians currently using PM measures. Open-ended, semistructured interviews, with 25 clinicians who chose to use PM measures, revealed that clinicians tended to face challenges involving technical concerns, negative responses from others, and personal barriers such as anxiety. The majority of participants discussed ways to overcome the challenges they experienced, including ensuring the fit of the PM measure, explaining measures to others to help engender a positive response, adapting their own perspective, and increasing their own and others’ knowledge of the measures. Implications for practicing psychologists and for knowledge translation efforts are discussed.