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They say word of mouth is the best way to get a referral for just about anything. Whether your looking for a plumber, family doctor or a therapist getting a specific name from someone you know is better than just picking someone out of the phone book.
Or is it? We all know that while you might get a great referral from a friend there is no guarantee that what worked for them will work for you. But what about asking for a referral from a therapist? Suppose you have friend in another city that needs a therapist. What about asking your therapist? If they did a good job for you, surely they would know a therapist they could recommend. And since its a professional referring another it might carry a little more weight than picking some one out of the phone book or a hat.
Well one would think so and there are many times that would be the case. However there are times that the referrals your therapist offers is not much different from picking a name out of a hat.
Here is how it works. You ask your therapist (or a friend, neighbor etc. who may be a therapist) if they know or can recommend a therapist in another city or even in the same city for that matter. If your therapist actually knows someone, that is great. If its a referral in the same city or town chances are they can give you a name or a couple of names of colleagues they know have worked with and may have shared common training or is someone that they have made referrals to in the past. In short the referral actually means something because the therapist has a track record with that colleague.
But as often as not therapists may not have clue about the person they are referring to you. The greater geographical distance, the less likely they are to know much about the skills, competence, ethics and integrity of the person they offer as a referral .
I wish I had a dollar for every time I have seen some therapist go to an online discussion group a.k.a. listserv and say something like. I am looking for a referral for a (they describe their patient (sometimes in great detail including their diagnosis description of family etc. ) in ( name of city or town). They then say to any number of others who they really dont know if they can recommend someone.
Sometimes a member of the list will jump in and say I can see that person and offer their phone number or otherwise volunteer to take the referral. But just as often, someone will say, I know someone who might be interested and may give the name of one of their colleagues. There is no telling how many degrees of separation are in that referral.
The point is that the person asking may not know at all the person offering. They may or may not have had email communication in the past but often they have virtually no knowledge of the persons competence. It becomes more compounded when the referral is to someone who knows someone who may know someone. One might as well open the phone book of that city/town and randomly take any name. It is the electronic equivalent of shouting in a theater, "Is there a Doctor in the house? "
Of course you could get lucky and the referral could turn out to be the best therapist since Carl Rogers. But they could just as easily be a quack, charlatan, fraud or impaired professional. You really have no way of knowing and because it comes as a referral from a therapist you know you are lulled into a false sense of security. It would be far better if the therapist you asked simply said I dont know.
Making a referral is serious business. If a professional makes a referral it assumes they actually know something about the person who they recommend. Or else why not simply say I dont know. A therapist stakes their reputation on their referrals and there have been cases where therapists have been sued successfully for malpractice for making negligent referral. A therapist bears some risk if they refer a patient to someone who is not sufficiently competent to adequately the patient or is somehow impaired.
One has to wonder can there be anything more negligent than getting a name from someone who you dont know and giving that name to a patient?
Visit Dr. John Riolo's websites, The Insider http://www.psychinsider.com and Your Advocate Online http://www.youradvocateonline.com
