At Nightingale, we believe that private practice has enormous potential to contribute to theory and best practice in the field of counselling therapy. Our goal is to create fundamental change in the way that psychotherapy knowledge is produced, disseminated, implemented, and practiced.  

The Nightingale Counselling Research Clinic is the only private practice organization of its kind. The clinic is assembled at the systems-level as a bidirectional knowledge production and translation entity. This is different from either a teaching/training clinic or a traditional research laboratory. At Nightingale, research, learning, teaching, and healthcare delivery are entirely interwoven. 

Private practice counselling therapy is not merely the for-profit arm of a sprawling mental healthcare system—it is an integral pillar of support in Canada, and the only place for a large portion of the dilemma to access care. Clients have an expectation that healthcare delivery will reflect the best practices contemporaneously available. But in counselling therapy, improving the quality of that care—beyond basic ethical standards—is the responsibility of individual Counsellors rather than the institutions which organize the field. 

There is a 17 year lag between the development and implementation of healthcare practice and theory. In counselling therapy, the most common training today is based on ~30—40-year-old models of practice.

The “Training” Model of “Professional Development”

The responsibility for healthcare improvement is individuated to the practitioner, (e.g. collecting client feedback, building collegial support networks, engaging in supervision, being deliberate in practice).

The process is unidirectional, measured by a therapist’s acceptance and fidelity to teachings. 

A Static and Unidirectional Model of Knowledge Production

Counselling modalities are packaged as completed objects—a complete and finished theory with a manual for practice.