Monthly Strategies for the Underdog Clinician
This is Vol 15 of The Underrated Dispatch.
FEATURED HIGHLIGHT: Reading AI: Clinical Judgment in AI-Assisted Practice
When I simplified the platform in May, I stepped away from self-study CE. This isn’t a return to that. It’s a live program built around one question I’ve been working on all year: how clinicians should read what AI gives them.
AI is already in this work, and it helps with real administrative load. But its output is written from a particular position, and that position describes some clients far better than others. Often not the clients this field serves. Most guidance tells clinicians to verify the output. Very little teaches how.
This course teaches how. It’s harm reduction applied to AI. Not pro-adoption, not anti-AI. Caution, not fear. When you delegate a task to a tool, you’re still accountable for the task, and for whoever the tool misses.
The first cohort starts January 11, 2027, and is capped at 25. It’s 30 hours, live, with CE approval pending. Reserving a seat is free, and nothing is charged until CE approval is confirmed. You don’t need to use AI to take it. I run every prompt live, and practice uses constructed scenarios only.
Paid members get 20% off and priority registration. The full schedule and pricing are on the course page.
Important October Updates
🟣 MENTAL ILLNESS AWARENESS WEEK (OCT 4–10) AND WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY (OCT 10)
Most of you don’t need a week to be aware. A week is still a reason to check whether a client’s diagnosis has started standing in for the whole person. This year’s World Mental Health Day theme is “Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change.” Being heard only counts if something changes because of it. That’s true in session, and it’s true of every system we hand a client’s story to.
🛠️ THIS ISSUE IS BUILT AROUND THE CLIENT WHO’S STAYING
A higher level of care was recommended, and it isn’t happening. The Quick Win and this month’s tactic both point at the same question: how to keep supporting that client well, without referring out from fear or going numb to the risk.
🎤 SPEAKING: ICB FALL CONFERENCE (OCT 21)
I’m presenting “The Judgment You Can’t Outsource: Staying Accountable When the Tools Get Confident” at the ICB Fall Conference on October 21 in Springfield. If you’ll be there, find me.
🎗️ RED RIBBON WEEK (OCT 23–31)
If you work with kids and teens, prevention messaging is everywhere in their schools this week. A good week to ask your clients what they’re hearing, and what it’s leaving out.
OCTOBER MISSION UPDATES
Here’s everything happening this month:
- New Clinician Series – On pause while other projects are in development. All posts remain available, and this month’s Quick Win was written with early-career clinicians in mind.
- Reading AI (10/1) – Seat reservations open for the January cohort
- Monthly Content Drop (10/15)
- Speaking: ICB Fall Conference (10/21, Springfield) — “The Judgment You Can’t Outsource”
- Mental Illness Awareness Week (10/4–10/10)
- World Mental Health Day (10/10)
- Red Ribbon Week (10/23–10/31)
BONUS SPECIAL — AI In Clinical Practice
New here? Start with the series.
If the course is the first you’re hearing of this work, the series is where it started. Foundation made the case that AI output always carries a standpoint, and that this is structural rather than a flaw waiting to be patched. Recognition is about learning to see the frame: the tool’s, the client’s, and your own.
The series and the course run side by side. The series is free and works through the ideas one post at a time. The course is where you practice them, live, with other clinicians. Reading the series doesn’t replace the training, and you don’t need to have read it to join a cohort.
Foundation
- AI Can Draft It. Reading It Is Still Clinical Work.
- Capability Isn’t the Problem
- It’s Not Wrong. That’s the Problem.
Recognition
Start with the first. The series reads best in order, but each post stands on its own.
- “It Feels Like Being Right” (8/1) — Recognition 1
- “It Folded. That Doesn’t Make You Right.” (8/15) — Recognition 2
Making Do
Holding high acuity in outpatient care · a two-page guide
A higher level of care was recommended. It isn’t happening. Maybe it’s insurance, a job, childcare, or the client’s own decision. They’re staying in outpatient care, and this guide is for what comes next. It starts with the level-of-care conversation to have at intake, then walks through a five-step cycle to run every session: checking whether fear or numbness is steering you, deciding whether escalating risk can still be addressed at this level, adjusting what you offer, keeping the door open, and documenting clearly without writing defensively. Includes side-by-side note examples and a checklist to run before you close the note. Free for all subscribers.
Download the Guide →UNDERRATED TACTIC: Supervise for Realism, Not Fear
Supervision is where a new clinician’s fears about a high-acuity client can be normalized and validated. However, if the only answer they hear is “refer out,” they learn to treat fear as clinical judgment. And if they hear “she’s always like this,” they learn to stop looking.
Neither helps the client. Supervise for realism instead. Ask what the client needs, what this level of care can actually hold, and what the clinician is feeling that might be steering the decision. When a client says no to more support, bring cultural humility to the question of why.
The goal isn’t a clinician who’s never afraid. It’s one who knows what to do with it.
PAIRS PERFECTLY WITH THIS MONTH’S QUICK WIN: Making Do
THIS MONTH’S RESOURCES – October Calendar Resources
Holiday stress starts building now, not in December. By the time Thanksgiving arrives, clients who are dreading the season are already in it. October is when the planning conversation is still a conversation, not damage control.
Two new resources go live on the calendar page October 1:
- Holiday Relapse Prevention Planning: a two-page guide for starting the conversation now, building a holiday survival plan, and mapping the key dates from Halloween through New Year’s Day.
- When the Work Follows You Home: a worksheet for the clients you can’t stop thinking about after hours, with strategies for creating separation and one boundary to commit to this week.
Recovery happens together, and so does the work. If you’ve built something that helps, whether it’s a script, a form, or a way of running a group, someone else is out there reinventing it this week.
The Underrated Superhero Resource Hub has ready-to-use tools, templates, and clinical resources built by someone who still sits across from clients every week. Use them.
— The Underrated Superhero
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