Developing competencies for digital clinical practice

The course was written by an expert reference group, with its membership drawn from the Digital Healthcare Sub-Committee of the Division of Clinical Psychology. Originally convened in 2017 by Professor Helen Pote and Dr Alesia Moulton-Perkins as an informal group of psychologists, service users and industry representatives interested in digital mental health, it was formally adopted by the British Psychological Society (BPS) as a subcommittee of the Division of Clinical Psychology in 2019, with the aim of creating some digital mental health competencies for trainee clinical psychologists and to promote and support the ethical implementation of digital practice across psychological professions in order that it becomes part of usual practice.

The committee was then commissioned by the BPS to write an eLearning package to deliver these competencies, but with the intention of it being suitable for trainees and qualified psychologists, as well as for psychological therapists. This course therefore has a wide remit, and as such learners may prefer to choose the activities most relevant to their professional background and stage of their career.