Focused Psychological Strategies Essentials
Earn CPD points and learn about key features of the Better Access Initiative.
5 October 2026
$990.00 AUD (inc GST)
What you will learn
Gain contemporary skills and knowledge for your job now.
As a health, allied health or nursing practitioner, you'll be familiar with the mental health issues and social distress frequently experienced by people treated in the health care system.
This micro-credential will equip you with focused psychological strategies and the confidence to respond to these issues appropriately and effectively.
You will gain practical skills to conduct brief assessments and interventions during routine healthcare, to better support patients or clients.
These skills will include competence in cognitive behaviour strategies for brief interventions with people experiencing a high prevalence of mental health issues and social distress that impact their health and well-being.
Learning in this course is equivalent to Level 8 of the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF).
Understand and apply cognitive behavioural strategies
Explore the effects of social distress to better understand and identify the ongoing physical and emotional impacts it can have. You'll learn to implement cognitive behavioural strategies that can be used for brief interventions with your patients or clients.
Gain the confidence to conduct psychosocial assessments
Understand key techniques in psychosocial assessment to identify a client's challenges. You'll analyse a 'real-world' case study, deliver an assessment based on your findings, and enhance your evidence-based interviewing skills to motivate behaviour change, learning to apply these principles in an online context.
Develop effective intervention plans
Learn how to better support your patients or clients in activity planning and problem-solving. Gain the skills needed to produce intervention plans that use appropriate, client-centered activity planning and effective intervention strategies.
Understand the Better Access initiative and Medicare items
Explore the key features of the Australian Government's Better Access initiative to understand how you can help clients or patients access the relevant Medicare support. Use this knowledge to strengthen your assessments and intervention plans.
Please view the video below to learn more about this course.
Who you will learn from
Learn from skilled academics and professional experts who will share invaluable knowledge you can use in your job.
Professor Lynette Joubert
Professor of Direct Practice Social Work
Lynette is a teaching and research professor at the University of Melbourne with qualifications in both social work and clinical psychology. She is also an Honorary Professor at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and Honorary Professor at the Centre for the Digital Transformation of Health. She has extensive experience in mentoring students and practitioners within allied health practice-based research based on her own experience in social services, health and mental health.
Fees
For individuals
To take Focused Psychological Strategies Essentials as a stand-alone micro-credential, you'll pay the normal course price.
$990.00 AUD (inc GST)
Please contact Student Support to discuss discounts and payment options for University of Melbourne staff or alumni, or to pay by invoice.
For teams
If you have three or more team members who are keen to upskill with Focused Psychological Strategies Essentials, get in touch to discuss pricing. For large groups, we can also deliver and contextualise this course exclusively for your organisation.
Pricing on request
Dates
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Course details
Want to know more about micro-credentials? See our Frequently Asked Questions
This micro-credential is ideal for nurses, mental health nurses, social workers, allied health workers, and general practitioners.
To undertake this course, you need to have an undergraduate degree in allied health, nursing, psychology, paramedicine, or medicine. You should also currently have a health or allied health role within a clinical or community setting, with the ability to conduct brief assessments and interventions.
This course has been developed to meet the growing demand for health, allied health and nursing practitioners to be able to provide psychological assessments and interventions within primary health care.
The course content features contemporary best practices, drawn from leading research. You will gain skills and strategies that you can apply in your role.
Upon completion of this course, you may be eligible to claim Medicare rebates.
By the end of this course, you'll be able to:
- Perform a psychosocial assessment of a client, using knowledge of interviewing techniques and effective assessment strategies
- Plan an effective intervention for clients, which demonstrates insights gained about the Better Access initiative and practical knowledge of appropriate, client-centred activity planning and effective intervention strategies.
This micro-credential runs for six weeks. Your total time commitment is approximately 42 hours, which includes:
- 10 hours guided learning
- 8 hours peer learning
- 12 hours independent study
- 12 hours for assessment tasks.
Assessment:
- Psychosocial assessment of a case scenario (40%)
- Planning an intervention for a client (60%).