Simon Fagernäs

Clinical psychologist and PhD-student aiming at increasing our understanding of the psychotherapists' clinical challenges and how to develop clinical supervision, educational programs and implementation to enhance clinical competence. Interested in mechanisms of change in psychotherapy and why some therapists are better than others. Graduated from the psychology program at Uppsala University in 2017. Background in the field of psychometrics, talent assessment and leadership development. Certified in Metacognitive Therapy (MCT) which is the main focus of my clinical work. 

My research is about clinical supervision, psychotherapist training, and therapist competencies. Currently, we are doing a triangulation of psychotherapists' clinical challenges and skill deficiencies to better understand the needs of support or competency development. In a mixed-methods approach we have collected data from psychotherapists, supervisors, and patients. The goal has been to develop a taxonomy of therapists clinical challenges where the therapist competencies are relevant also for the patients.

We are also running a set of studies with Single Case Experimental Design (SCED) to assess the effects of live supervision using Bug-in-the-Eye/Ear (BITE). BITE is a method for live-supervision where the therapist gets real-time guidance from the supervisor during the therapy session with the patient. In comparison to traditional methods of supervision, BITE enables real time-feedback which is one of the most important factors for maximizing procedural learning. We will proceed with new studies to examine different supervision formats and its effects on therapist competence and patient outcome. 

Recently, we have started a project within the field of suicide prevention and safety planning intervention with the goal of evaluating effects of a brief educational program on nurses levels of burnout and self-perceived competency. We are also evaluating effects on patient outcomes and process variables, mainly therapeutic alliance. The project also aims at evaluating the effects of additional supervision. 

Other projects focuses at increasing our general understanding of the therapist effect as well as estimating the overall effect of continuing education on patient outcome. 

Alongside above, I'm involved in several research projects in the field of Metacognitive Therapy (MCT): a randomized controlled trial comparing MCT with Unified Protocol for patient with anxiety disorders with comorbidity in an outpatient psychiatric context, a non-inferiority trial testing the effects of different levels of training, as well as studies examining mechanisms of change. 

My main supervisor is Sven Alfonsson and we also collaborate with Ulrike Maass and her team from Potsdams University in Berlin, Germany.

Previously, I've been interested in how to make us of artificial intelligence within qualitative methods.