About Me Template

What is an About Me Template?

An About Me Template is a useful tool that can work in two ways. Firstly, for the benefit of the healthcare professional. It is always nice to get to know the patients you will be working with outside of the context you know them in. Information about their personal lives can also support you in understanding what might be going on. In occupations such as psychology, psychiatry, and therapy - it is important to build and maintain a therapeutic relationship. It can help if the patient completes an About Me Template. Likewise, it can support a patient to feel comfortable about their healthcare professional if they also complete an About Me Template. 

Although the information required depends on the purpose of the template's utilization, healthcare professionals can depend on a range of broad information to make first impressions of possible plans with clients. This information may include:

• Personal information
• Medical history
• Medications
• Allergies
• Chronic conditions
• Emergency contacts
• Communication preferences
• Family history
• Occupation
• Cultural/religious considerations
• Personal goals and values
• Diagnoses

An About Me Template can support healthcare professionals when meeting with a client initially. It can be difficult when meeting a therapist or general practitioner, so the template can serve as an ice-breaker and a rapport-building tool. 

The About Me Template may be utilized before the initial session begins. This way, clients are able to complete the worksheet and bring it to their first session to discuss. It can also guide conversation within the first session (or any session). However you choose to use the About Me Template in your sessions, we know you’ll know how to utilize it accordingly for your patients.

How does it work?

With Carepatron, getting started on your professional relationship with your patients is incredibly simple through our Printable About Me Template. We’ve even created a step-by-step set of instructions to support you.

Step One: Obtain the template

You can navigate the Carepatron Templates page to find our About Me Template. You can choose to download the template for electronic completion or download a printable version you can distribute to your clients.

Step Two: Complete the template

It is really that easy! You can decide when and if you give your client one of these templates. It may be the most useful within the first session. If you, as the healthcare professional, are completing an About Me Template, it also may be useful to offer yours to your client so they can get to know you, and also have something to reference when completing theirs.

Step Three: Store the completed template

Lastly, once the completed template has been returned, you can store it securely on Carepatron’s safe patient portal. This can be accessed through different healthcare providers in order to create a seamless working experience with your patients.

When would you use this template?

You might choose to incorporate the About Me Template into your healthcare work for various reasons. Whether you’re a general practitioner, therapist, physiotherapist, or podiatrist, an About Me Template can benefit you and your patients. 

Patient intake

You may choose to implement an About Me Template into your patient intake forms. This can help gather essential patient information when you first meet them. Specifically, it may help psychologists uncover their family situation or background and what might be useful tools in sessions. For general practitioners, it can help healthcare professionals comprehend medical history, current health status, and needs. 

Patient-centered care planning

An About Me Template can help patients communicate important goals, values and preferences. This may be especially useful during therapy sessions where person-centered therapies play a major role. In this case, it can also help build important rapport with first-time clients. 

Working with children

An About Me Template can be extremely helpful when it comes to pediatric work as well. Whether psychologists want to see the child’s view of their life and family or if a general practitioner wants to understand developmental milestones and allergies, an About Me Template can encompass that information. 

Emergency contacts

About Me Templates are also a great way to help other healthcare practitioners understand who to contact in case of an emergency.

What do the results mean?

The results can vary depending on what the Free About Me Template is being used for. 

Personal communication tool 

As a personal communication tool, the About Me Template can support patients and healthcare practitioners in comprehending the other party. It can aid conversations about personal lives when individuals may find it difficult to open up or discuss family issues. 

Elderly care

As an elderly care tool, the About Me Template could be utilized as a way to correspond to other healthcare professionals' information about an elderly individual. This can include diagnoses, medications, emergency contacts, and specific considerations for their care.

Care planning

The About Me Template can also be utilized as a care planning tool. It can also be helpful to revisit the About Me Template during future sessions to see if anything has changed or if the individual wants to add anything to their template. Initial information can help healthcare professionals plan treatment and implement certain therapy styles for those undergoing psychological support. 

Networking

About Me Templates can help individuals successfully network what they find important about themselves to others in their lives. The About Me Template does not have to be used in a medical context, but we’d recommend diluting some of your personal information if you choose to use this template outside of the healthcare context.

Research & evidence

An About Me Template can be used for patients and for healthcare professionals. When searching for a reliable and safe place for healthcare, people may be more inclined to choose clinics with a page dedicated to ‘About Us’.

Dublino (2023) suggests that having information about yourself that is easily accessible by others can put a face to the name and title. Consequently, this helps to humanize you as a healthcare professional, which can help build rapport and trust between you and your patients.

The concept of self-disclosure within healthcare has been a long-standing difficult topic. Some healthcare professionals don’t like to include personal information about themselves in their practice, and some do. The argument has long been “How much?”. Lussier and Richard (2007) have suggested that revealing information about yourself as a healthcare practitioner actually has many benefits:

• Works towards improving patient support
• Supports patients in revealing distress they might not have otherwise expressed
• It helps to reinforce the motivation of patients
• Creates a bond between the patient and healthcare professional
• Develops trust

(Lussier & Richard, 2007)

According to the research, About Me Templates can positively impact the healthcare profession and your practice with your new and regular patients.

References

Dublino, J. (2023). The Importance of Your Website’s “About” Page. Business.com. https://www.business.com/articles/importance-of-about-page-on-website/

Lussier, M.-T., & Richard, C. (2007). Self-disclosure during medical encounters. Canadian Family Physician, 53(3), 421–422. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1949073/