About the TIP Tool

African American psychiatrist writing in textbook with two people in the foreground, photo by Monkey Business Images/Adobe Stock

Potential Uses of TIP

There is a need for increased efforts to equip community-based providers to deliver evidence-based psychotherapies.

The TIP Tool has many potential uses:

  • Inform which features to incorporate when designing a new psychotherapy training.
  • Provide guidance on how to modify existing psychotherapy training to best meet the needs of the training program and trainees who participate.
  • Assess existing psychotherapy trainings to learn how features of the training align with the stated goals.
  • Support trainees and their organizations in selecting among different types of psychotherapy trainings to meet their training goals
  • Support researchers in documenting training elements and examining how specific training elements predict clinician and patient outcomes

Researcher Spotlight

Development of the TIP Tool

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To develop the TIP Tool, we identified core, effective components of psychotherapy trainings that appear to be most critical for clinicians to achieve adherence and competence in delivering an evidence-based psychotherapy. The development included:

  1. Literature Review: We conducted a comprehensive literature search to identify the core elements of effective psychotherapy trainings
  2. Expert Input: To address limitations in the training literature, we conducted a series of key informant discussions with experts on psychotherapy training and implementation science.
  3. Pilot Testing: We applied the TIP Tool to eight psychotherapy trainings delivered by two training organizations and made changes to the TIP Tool and User Guide to provide clearer definitions of certain items. The revised version of the tool is the TIP 2.0.