MFI Student Records Database Tutorial Starting Out When

MFI Student Records Database Tutorial

Starting Out • When you first open the database, it should look something like this: Adam M Moore coded this awesome piece of material!

Starting Out • Before you do anything, you must enable blocked content. It is possible to permanently enable blocked content for all databases, but this is a BAD idea, because evil hackers are out there who might try to ruin your computer with malicious code. So you’ll just have to live with enabling it every time you use the database. It’s for your own good. Click here This security alert with come up. Select “Enable this content” and click OK. Try looking underneath images in the tutorial. All your base are belong to me!

Starting Out • First, enter your intern ID and name by clicking on this button (bottom right): Click here Fill out the appropriate boxes and click “Done”

Creating Reporting Periods • You need to create a reporting period every semester. Number the reporting periods in order (1, 2, 3, etc. ) for each semester you see clients. • Be sure you know exactly the start and end dates of each reporting period before you add any client data. • If you duplicate dates or reporting period numbers, you may cause permanent damage that may be unfixable. • Make sure you have the correct dates when you create a reporting period. If you add data with the wrong dates and then later go back and change the dates of the reporting period, you may cause irreparable damage. 1 7/27/2021 12/20/2021

Editing Reporting Periods • Again, once you have entered data for a reporting period, you do not want to go back and change the reporting period dates. • This means that the “Edit a reporting period” button is there to make changes in the dates of a reporting period you have created BEFORE you actually add client data for that reporting period.

Creating Clients • • Any client you have must be entered into the system, even if it is an offsite internship or your reflecting team If your off-site internship is a group therapy where hours are not tracked per client, put the name of the internship in both the First and Last Name boxes. If you create a client for reflecting team, or an off-site internship that does not have a client type (e. g. individual/couple/family), select N/A in the box. To track your Reflecting Team hours, type “Reflecting Team” into both the First and Last Name boxes. The client number is simply the next available client number you have. My Off-Site Internship N/A Reflecting Team N/A

Creating Clients • Please note that even though you may be tracking individuals who attend your off-site internship sessions elsewhere, you will NOT track that information in this database. You only track actual hours (not clients) here, so each internship is a “client, ” but individual clients within an internship are not put into the system. • If you have an off-site internship and track hours for that and track hours for each client who attends as well, your hours will not track properly.

Editing Clients • Editing client data is easy, and fun! Select the client from the list and click “Go” and you’ll be enjoying it in no time. • You can edit the client name, whether the client is active (e. g. open case), the client type, etc. • NOTE: When you close a case, be sure to open the client in this screen and deselect the “Client Active” box to note to the system that the client is now closed. When the case is closed, this box should NOT have a check in it ! Try working on Christmas and see what happens…

Closing Cases • This is redundant. But it’s so important, it gets its own slide. Every time you close a case, you MUST edit the client in the system and uncheck the “Active” box, effectively closing the case in the system. If you do not do this, your reports will be in error. And you will cry.

Reporting Client Hours • Add (report) client hours by clicking “Report client contact hours” after selecting the client from the dropdown box. You must create a client before adding hours for that client.

Reporting Client Hours • • Be careful to not make a mistake when you put the date the client was seen. This can be difficult to fix later. You do NOT need to put a zero (0) in the boxes for individual, couple, or family hours. The system will interpret an empty box as a zero for you. Be sure to click the Done button when you are done. Do not close the window manually. Closing the window on your own does NOT guarantee the data won’t be added to the system. Be careful not to double enter data. Let’s rephrase this: If you start entering data for a client, then realize you did not want that data entered into the system, closing the window using the X in the top right corner may not resolve the issue. The client hours may still be entered into the system even if you did not want them to be. If the data is entered for the client and you did not want it in the system, you may have to simply go back and edit the hours to be zero. Check your hours in the database regularly to make sure your records are correct (using this function).

Reporting Client Hours • Client hours MUST be input into the system in chronological order, especially before you create your first supervision report. If you stockpile your hours and wait to put them into the system until after you have many hours, you MUST put them into the system in order by date you saw the clients. You should NEVER report client hours for a future week if a previous week’s supervision report has not yet been created. This will ruin the reporting functionality of this system. • You MAY, however, go back and add or edit client hours from previous weeks once the supervision reports for those weeks have been created.

Editing Client Hours • If you want to edit a client hour, but the date was either input incorrectly or you do not recall the exact date you saw the client, view the list of total client hours per reporting period to see what date the system has recorded for this client contact hour.

Reporting Supervision Hours • You may report multiple supervisions that occur on the same date. Here is how you would do this: – Click the “Go” button for Report supervision hours – Enter the data about the first supervision session you are reporting. Click “Done. ” – Repeat this process for the next supervision session you had that day. Even though they are on the same date, they can both be entered into the system without problem. • If you are only reporting one supervision session for a given day, just follow the same instructions above, but only once.

Editing Supervision Hours • • • If you attempt to edit a supervision session from a previous date on which multiple supervision sessions occurred, you will select the “Edit supervision hours” option under the Supervision section. Under “Date of Supervision to Edit” select the data on which the supervision sessions occurred. Only one of the supervision sessions will be in the window at a time, but using the Record Selectors at the bottom of the Edit Supervision Hours window, you can choose any of the supervision sessions from that date.

Showing all Client Hours Seen in a Reporting Period • If you become confused about client hours and dates when clients were seen in a specific reporting period, you can use this… …to see a list of all client hours seen in a semester. • Check this with your paper records to make sure you remembered to track all of your hours properly.

Viewing a List of Clients • You may view a list of all active (open cases) clients or all clients using these options:

The Weekly MFI Report • The weekly MFI report consists of the information you will give to the clinic coordinator once a week for your previous week’s hours. This report is automatically generated using data in the system. If you make changes to client or supervision hours and recreate the Weekly MFI Report for the same dates, the old data will be overwritten with new data

The Weekly Supervision Report • The Weekly Supervision Report is the report you give to your supervisor once a week in supervision. REGARDLESS OF WHETHER YOU ACTUALLY HAVE SUPERVISION IN A GIVEN WEEK, YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST CREATE A REPORT FOR EACH AND EVERY WEEK that you are an intern at MFI. • This means that even when you go on vacation or have a long break between semesters, you still need to create a supervision report for each week! • Failing to create a report for a given week will ruin all datareporting features in this database! • However, you do not need to create these reports until you see your first hour of supervision. But after that, you must create one every week until you graduate!

Printing Reports • Any report that you create can be printed, but none of them will automatically print. You must select that option yourself. Each report will be created on screen. You can then choose to print that report from within the program.

Editing/Updating the Weekly Supervision Report • If you need to make changes to a weekly supervision report for client contact or supervision hours, you simply add or edit those hours in the system and the Weekly Supervision Report will automatically update. You can then view the updated report, as seen here:

Intake Tracking • You must track all of your intakes (even if they do not come to their intake session) by name, date you received the intake, and date the intake was returned if the intake never came in. You may print a report at any time of your intake-related data for your supervisor using this:

End of Semester Reports • The Cumulative Practicum Client Report and the Reporting Period Supervision Report are to be printed at the end of each semester. However, you may print or create either of these reports at any time in a reporting period, assuming you have at least one client contact hour and one supervision hour. These reports automatically update based on data in the system.

(cool and) Refreshing • If you enter information into the database, but it does not show up in dropdown boxes immediately, you can press the “Refresh Page Data” button in the lower right corner of the screen to update all information.

The End • • And thus ended the tutorial. If you use the database well, it will make your life much easier and all those long nights of counting hours on yellow receipt copies will be (mostly) over. Good luck and enjoy! A couple final, incredibly important, notes: – Computer hardware occasionally fails. You should always back up your database on at least one other storage device (such as a second flash drive, hard drive at home, etc. ). You will understand why this is important the first time your primary storage device fails and you lose all your data. It happens every year to someone. – On a related note, even though this database will track all your important information, a paper trail of your client contact and supervision hours is never a bad idea. Inevitably, someone will do something in this database that I never imagined anyone would do and totally blow the system up. The sad news is that it is totally possible to damage the system to such a degree that your data will not be recoverable and you will have to reenter all of your data from the first client hour you ever saw! Although I do not anticipate this happening often, it will unquestionably happen at some point. So, again, track your data on paper very well just in case. This may be as simple as doing a thorough job in the client case files. Do not underestimate the importance of doing this.