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 We discuss the importance of having a strong clinical team that is diverse in their strengths and approaches, but above all, has the ability to show up as their authentic self.

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[Music]
welcome to another episode of finding
peaks i believe this is uh
episode four i was told yeah yeah
it’s again because i was told the prior
episode was
the third and i actually stated it was
the fourth so
welcome to the fourth episode here maths
hard
yes yeah math is difficult so
just want to start uh today with uh we
have some title changes in the room here
at uh
peaks recovery centers jason friesma is
now our chief clinical officer
oh and the crowd goes wild thank you for
a while
and introducing the new chief operating
officer of peaks recovery centers clint
nicholson everybody
clinton yes also a therapist clap
i would slow class i would also like to
introduce also a therapist
i’d also like to introduce clinton’s
cowboy boots uh also making an
appearance today
right here yeah i recently purchased a
truck and they came with the truck
nice congratulations on that and i have
a really big deal
obligated to wear them by dodge so as
across that off the list
as these episodes roll along we’re
getting feedback
and some of that feedback so far has
been that uh we’re a little
we’re seemingly a little too uptight um
in these sessions so we’re really trying
to
explore not doing that here so expect
bad jokes so let’s expect bad jokes
moving forward
always difficult at least for me in
doing this show because there’s a
seriousness to addiction treatment
certainly
and individuals are suffering of course
across america from the disease of
addiction and so
um it’s not always you know i haven’t
personally known how to approach it
myself or how serious to be on camera
because it is
serious to us and certainly each and
every day we come at you know and to
work with the seriousness and getting
people well but
uh certainly want people to appreciate
watching us and
not be so serious yeah do you guys like
to
comment on that i’m feeling a little
nervous today
i agree okay um i’m hopeful that you’ve
scripted some jokes
i have no jokes okay so we’ll jump right
into it okay
yeah so last week uh clinton said
something was a little passive i don’t
know if everybody caught it in the third
episode but i think he said something
along the lines of
i’m not excellent i’m maybe great at the
family
side of things that’s uh that’s a quote
yeah okay
okay yeah but something along those
lines exposes the reality
of addiction treatment centers and in
that
you know i think taking one step back
you know peaks started with 36 beds six
years ago and we have 36 beds today
the thing that has changed at peaks
recovery centers is we went from 12
staff members
to 75 staff members and 67 of those i
believe today are full-time staff
members here so
so we’re advancing this enormous team
around these 36 beds over the past six
years and i
just wanted to talk about through the
lens of the clinical lens about the
importance of having a team
i mean in essence you’re both lpcs of
course you’re in lac you’re about to
you know get your lac after taking the
test recently equal licensures
should mean equal skill sets right right
but they don’t it turns out turns out
they don’t do that
so yeah and actually you know clinton
and i
uh since you’re bringing us up
specifically we
we’re very different in our approaches
um
i like to dig in uh emotionally and
clinton likes to make fun of me for that
and clinton likes to put things together
and look forward with clients
and so uh actually
it complements our styles quite well
actually
it turns out that turns into just
working really well together
and and the other thing is having a wide
variety of clinicians in a wide variety
of
skill levels gives us the opportunity to
to have clients that are drawn to
various
clinicians and various things that
clinicians say in various clinical
approaches
so and and the other thing that’s
different is that i’m funny
and clinton uh thinks he’s funny yeah
that checks out that does absolutely
yeah that absolutely checks out
yeah so to elaborate in a slightly more
um
intelligent way than jason so yeah like
like you said
jason our our styles do differ again
you like to do feelings things yeah
and i do less of that i do more
pragmatic practical
solution-focused stuff that’s based in
kind of integration and you know one of
the interesting things is that because
we have these two different styles we
were actually
we’ve actually started to model our
programming around that you know we
our clients get to come in and they get
to really dig deep like jason said
and really um gain a tremendous amount
of emotional insight
and then they also on the sort of the
second half of that programming is they
get to actually land that
in something that’s more practical and
skills based and experiential
so this is just an example one example
of how you can utilize these different
skill sets from counselors and knowing
your counselor’s strengths
and also being very transparent and uh
about you know like i said family is not
my specialty it’s just it just isn’t i
i have other areas that i focus in and
um
that i excel in so those are the those
are those
the places that i’m going to lean into
clinically
yeah i mean for me i just think it’s
it’s relevant and important for
treatment centers across america to be
honest about their approaches to care
and through that honesty match the
curriculum to the skill sets of the
clinicians and not just
you know unnecessarily force clinicians
without those skill sets to run
you know groups or individual sessions
you know leading to
you know less quality in in the
environment of care
and here in colorado springs you know
we’ve got what a little more than a
million people now
i mean i feel like since i’ve moved here
there’s like a quarter million people
have at least moved here but
um you know we go we put an indeed out
you know indeed
out there to attract clinical firepower
into our organization and
just kind of even in a population of
over a million people now just kind of
talk through our experiences of the
difficulty in actually locating the
talent that can
fit the needs of not only our patient
demographic but that is informed through
the curriculum that
you know we’ve built out here at peaks
well certainly just culturally at peaks
we really do work to
well being a clinician at peaks let me
just put it that way
uh somebody who works for us it’s a
pretty immersive experience honestly
we don’t just see clients for an hour a
week in an office
and then kind of get about our business
we
we walk with clients we play disc golf
on our campus with clients we
play cornhole while we’re talking about
various things
so we really or we even share meals with
them or
or have coffee at times as well just to
[Music]
offer that support and in that path like
that
is also hard work for clinicians at
times because
uh that that is what causes us to go
above and beyond and
and i think it’s the essence of what we
do
and that isn’t really trained
in school it’s the extra special sauce i
guess if you will that
that i think our clients always feel
supported and heard and that there
is always somebody available to talk to
you mentioned how the growth of our
staff part of that
is there’s always someone awake and
around for somebody to have a
conversation with i just this week had a
client who was
who told me that at 3 am he woke up and
couldn’t fall back asleep and went out
and had an hour-long
conversation uh with our client care
uh person and so i just really
that matters having that availability
and having
kind of this real-time ability to be
supported
and cared for yeah i mean we really
the expectation for our counselors is um
there’s a level of vulnerability that
you have to be able to achieve with your
clients in order to be
to again to sort of like fit into the
peaks culture
you know it’s uh we really
strive for that community feeling and i
mean
there are primary counselors and clients
are assigned to a primary counselor but
the reality is that every counselor
there is every client is there for every
client
and throughout the day different clients
will pull different counselors
and sit down with them talk with them um
and again i think it kind of speaks back
to you know different levels of
different types of strengths and
different types of styles you know
because our counselors run groups with
everybody and we’re again we’re fully
immersive
the clients start to learn what that
style is and what that type
of counseling approach is and they will
start to gravitate you know and it gives
them the opportunity
if um you know if somebody’s looking for
you know really struggled and a grief
and loss week and is really needs to
process that they can find jason you
know and if somebody is
getting ready to discharge and they’re
freaking out about what is the actual pr
practical side of sobriety look like
they can seek me out so
i keep touching my microphones banging
in the control room yeah yeah so yeah
this is just about my flaws today this
is me being vulnerable everybody so
yeah so you’re doing great so you got
you are you’re doing great
thank you so you guys have the the fancy
credentials lpclac behind your name and
i think
one of the things almost almost lac
behind us wow
yeah the things that i want to pull from
that is it seems like just
just having the degree doesn’t inform
the skill sets or the ability to show up
for individuals especially in a complex
patient demographic environment that you
know we operate within so
what do you think is one of the most
crucial like fundamental pieces to
becoming you know a great clinician or a
clinician that can
inspire such a complex patient
demographic including
family systems and so forth i’ll give a
cliche sentence
which is in order to do this work you
have to do the work
you’re on work you have to do your own
work you have to work on yourself
and and have a high degree of
self-awareness
along with appropriately placed
boundaries along with an openness
to in order to be open to impacting
people you also
get to be open to being impacted by
people it goes both ways you can’t kind
of be unidirectional in that way
and that is the part that makes peaks so
rewarding honestly and so challenging
both
i think in my experience particularly
with addiction treatment
authenticity in a counselor is just the
absolutely most essential i mean
a lot of our clients this is not their
first rodeo right they’ve been through
this process they’ve experienced
uh counseling and treatment in the past
and they can just
i mean they know the language they know
the the sort of like clinical jargon and
they can
read a counselor who is not being
genuine
like that you know so being able to show
up as your true self
not showing up as your counselor self
which again requires that you’re doing
your work
you know and it requires yet again to be
vulnerable
and being open to the idea like jason
said of this sort of reciprocated
exchange of of insight this this
reciprocated exchange of
kind of growth and exploration so
yeah absolutely there’s a there’s a
great deal of addiction treatment
centers out there
that you know state that they have
similar services to us that they can
stabilize and they can provide a
continuation of care and all of this
sort of stuff
but the differences in departments by
comparison are quite extraordinary at
times i mean at peaks we
employ a full 24 7 medical team to have
two providers on psychiatrists and an md
at any given time to support our patient
demographic
that is generally less than a census of
assistants that can be made available to
our patients
and the supporting residential staff
certainly our client care aids and you
know never mind all the administrative
support that goes on i mean how
fundamentally important is it
you know we’ve grown from the very
beginning jason um
at peak’s recovery not having all of
these things on the side what have we
what have we learned along the way in
bringing in these departments
and um you know building them up with
the intentionality and intensity that
they offer the patient demographic
how much is that supporting the clinical
approach to care
well to your point um
the ability to staff our program well
and with a lot of
uh qualified and trained people not just
clinical but
across all departments does really
i think give us the ability to really
become excellent within our department
and then kind of go the extra mile
within that department rather than
kind of spreading thin we get to spread
deep i just made that up
that’s brilliant yeah i actually really
like that thank you it should be a good
shirt
yeah next week available on our website
yeah that was something yeah that was a
t-shirt creation
yeah absolutely yeah absolutely only
four episodes
how do i follow that right so next
question um
i i think you know i’ve worked up for a
lot of
treatments uh treatment centers and just
different uh behavioral health centers
and
the the level of staff to us when i
you know when i first came in i was just
kind of like flabbergasted about like
how much
how much staff and how much support and
how many people are really involved
in the the sort of like whole peaks
programming
and um i realized very quickly
that what we have the ability to do is
truly wrap around people
and give them a level of
safety and support and acceptance that
for
a huge number of our clients they’ve
never experienced before
and it’s powerful it’s absolutely
powerful and
it’s transformative which um
you just don’t see a lot of other places
you just don’t see that in other places
yeah i think that you know just the
other day we had a one of our
patients uh was disrupted in a medical
meeting and
immediately wanted to leave and in my
head i just thought
somebody’s gonna wrap their arms around
him quite quickly and the beautiful
thing about
having all of this staff to support
these individuals is that though this
individual can be immediately attended
to whether through on-call staff or
whatever’s going on that
all the other patients on this side
aren’t there their quality of care isn’t
going
down at the same time so i like this
idea of building depth within
departments by having departments in
support of it rather than stretching
departments then
um you know which you know felt like
kind of
our humble beginnings you know and so to
be able to advance
these levels of care and towards and in
the direction of patient care i think
has just been a wonderful experience
that i just want
you know families out there to be
cognizant of as you shop for
addiction treatment services how crucial
it is to have these dynamics within a
company culture
and also too to
have maybe through the lens of humility
to be
as a ceo to be sitting here with you
know other chief officers of our company
culture
be able to state openly like i’m not
that’s not my specialty and that’s not
my category
and when we recognize that honestly as
addiction treatment centers or any
really medical setting
um you know we can then move out into
you know to the indeed ads and really
pull in the talent necessary to fill
those gaps in the direction of patient
care so
well i think you know candidly
clinton since you are new i know you and
i’ve wrestled with
how many staff do we need and why why do
we have so many like i’ve listened to
you do it and
push back on you that like this you’re
right we could actually
stretch ourselves thinner and we could
yeah um
but it is really uh our staffing levels
that give us
some opportunity and time to have the
between
groups and the between sessions
conversations um
that really all the planned stuff is so
critically important but a lot of the
change happens
uh in the margins well i’m lucky for you
even though i’m an operations guy i’m
also a clinician so i’m able to sort of
see that um see both sides of that
because operationally i mean if that
that single lens
tells a completely different story and i
think that that’s what a lot of
uh programs are built around you know
but by being able to sort of bring
operational and clinical components
together um i mean that just kind of
describes peaks in a nutshell
you know there’s just this beaut this
amazing blend of
of focus and uh it has created
an organization and a culture and
programming that is extremely unique and
very powerful
so yeah absolutely well i again i
appreciate
the opportunity to present episode four
the real episode four yeah that’s
episode eight
episode four join us next week for
episode four
looking forward to episode five to
continue to bring you content hopefully
our
humor or lack thereof is not in the way
of you hearing
the important information we uh desire
to deliver to everybody today
i’m just gonna give one more here please
comment with
the boots in focus we look forward to
your comments um please
give us questions so that we can provide
answers and insights into the addiction
treatment space
and from here in colorado springs
signing off
until next time