Continuing Education on Diagnosis and Treatment

Are You Treating Symptoms, or Truly Diagnosing the Root of Your Patient’s Problems?

  • Do you feel confident explaining your diagnostic rationale to clients, colleagues, or third-party reviewers—if needed?

  • Are cultural context, developmental factors, and differential diagnoses consistently considered in your diagnostic process?

  • How do you navigate ethical concerns around overdiagnosis, misdiagnosis, or assigning labels that may not fully capture the client’s experience?

  • Are your treatment goals clearly anchored to diagnostic criteria, or do they feel loosely connected?

  • Do time constraints and documentation demands ever pull your focus away from thoughtful diagnosis and treatment planning?

    Clinicians strive to provide thoughtful, ethical care, yet balancing accurate diagnosis, meaningful treatment planning, and thorough documentation can feel overwhelming especially with time constraints and productivity demands. The DSM-5 is intended to support clinical understanding, but in practice, many providers find themselves questioning how to use it ethically and responsibly without oversimplifying complex human experiences or unintentionally reducing clients to diagnostic labels. When there isn’t enough space for careful reflection, diagnostic decisions may feel rushed, leaving treatment plans that don’t fully capture the client’s needs.

    Documentation presents a similar challenge. Ideally, clinical notes should reflect the depth of our reasoning and support continuity of care, not become another source of stress or distraction from the therapeutic process. Yet many clinicians struggle to find a balance between efficiency and clarity, wondering how much detail is enough, what truly matters, and how to ensure their documentation aligns with both ethical standards and real-world expectations. This course is designed to offer a practical, flexible approach to diagnostic reasoning, ethical DSM-5 use, and streamlined documentation, helping clinicians create treatment plans that are intentional, defensible, and grounded in compassionate, high-quality care.

Diagnosis and Assessment is A Lifelong Process

Even the most experienced clinicians can find diagnosis and treatment planning challenging, so if you’ve landed on this page, you’re exactly where you should be. As therapists, we engage in continuing education to sharpen our clinical judgment and strengthen client care—and that includes refining how we assess, conceptualize, and plan treatment across the course of therapy.

Working with clients who bring diverse histories, identities, and presenting concerns requires more than simply applying diagnostic criteria. Effective diagnosis and treatment planning demand thoughtful integration of clinical data, cultural context, client strengths, and evolving goals. It’s common to encounter complexity, ambiguity, or presentations that don’t fit neatly into diagnostic categories, and to question how best to translate assessment into meaningful, responsive treatment plans.

Revisions, stuck points, and uncertainty are a natural part of the clinical process. A growth-oriented therapist remains committed not only to client outcomes but also to ongoing professional development—staying current with evidence-based practices, seeking consultation, and engaging in reflective practice. This training is designed to support you in building a flexible, ethically sound approach to diagnosis and treatment planning, while offering practical tools you can use with confidence in real-world clinical work.

Reach out to learn more about our CEU on Diagnosis and Treatment Planning

Our Continuing Education Unit training on diagnosis and treatment planning

At FTC Learning, our trainings are designed to build foundational knowledge, strengthen practical skills, and support real-life application. Our Diagnosis and Treatment Planning Training is led by seasoned licensed clinical professional counselors and licensed marriage and family therapists who bring experience from schools, private practice, and group practice settings. Each training is grounded in evidence-based research and tailored for a wide range of professionals, including clinicians, business professionals, and school officials.

Some of the key topics addressed in our Diagnosis and Treatment Planning Training include:

  • Cultural humility and bias in diagnosis, including limits of the DSM framework

  • Ethical considerations in differential diagnosis and ruling out conditions

  • Revisiting and revising diagnoses as clinical presentations evolve

  • Linking assessment data, diagnosis, goals, and interventions coherently

  • Documentation that supports continuity of care and clinical decision-making

  • Balancing thoroughness with efficiency to reduce burnout and cognitive load

Our trainings combine clinical experience with evidence-based methods to deliver high-quality, practical learning. Sessions include slideshow presentations, role plays, take-home resources, and opportunities for discussion, reflection, and case consultation. Trainings are offered in a hybrid format—virtually or in person—based on individual or organizational preference, and all sessions are conducted in small, interactive groups that encourage collaboration and community building.

Learning outcomes include: By the end of this training, participants will be able to use the DSM ethically and thoughtfully in diagnosis and treatment planning, while considering cultural context and clinical complexity. Clinicians will strengthen their ability to develop and revise diagnoses, communicate them appropriately with clients, and create efficient documentation that meaningfully supports effective treatment and continuity of care.

  • This training is highly practice-oriented, offering concrete examples, clinical frameworks, and documentation strategies that can be applied directly to everyday clinical work.

  • Yes. Participants will learn how to document diagnoses and treatment plans clearly and efficiently while meeting ethical, legal, and administrative requirements without sacrificing clinical integrity.

  • Yes. The training emphasizes culturally responsive diagnostic practices and explores how identity, context, and systemic factors influence assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning.

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