We advise clinicians not to start with technicians until they are very skilled in neurofeedback. It’s much harder to supervise a technician until your knowledge of neurofeedback is sufficient. If you’re going to use a technician or staff member, he or she needs a very good training course also. It should probably be the same course the main clinician took. You don’t want someone running a system who is not well-trained.

Who Makes the Protocol Training Decisions?

There can be challenges if someone is running the session and someone else did the intake and is making protocol decisions. You have to rely closely on the technician or staff person to communicate all important information from the client. If the staff member doesn’t have a good sense of what to look for in the client, or is not well tuned in to the client, important information that could influence the training decisions can get lost.

How Long Does It Take?

It’s can take six months or a year before many clinicians are ready to supervise other staff. That said, there are occasionally clinicians who bring on technicians within the first month or two and appear to succeed. They don’t want to hook up the electrodes, and they don’t want to sit and run the sessions. In that case, they bring in staff (hopefully trained), but they still observe the client and make protocol decisions.

How you use a technician also depends on the training model of neurofeedback you choose. For example, if you are working with a clinician who uses a qEEG, it may be slightly easier to use a technician who is primarily following the qEEG. But even in that case, clinical feedback is crucial. To do otherwise is irresponsible and can be harmful to clients.