80 Clinical Vignettes for Test Taking

80 Clinical Vignettes for Test Taking, Licensing Exam Prep, and Practical Applications

Author: Liz B. Johnston

Page Count: 268
ISBN: 978-0-87101-596-9
Published: 2024

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Earn 8.5 CEUs for reading this title! For more information, visit the Social Work Online CE Institute.

Clinical case studies are a fundamental tool for developing “practice wisdom,” the intuitive understanding of client dynamics and core issues in a case. This collection of 80 real-world-based clinical vignettes offers a diverse range of clinical counseling cases, covering all the major DSM-5-TR diagnostic categories.

Working through the clinical vignettes in this book, you will build your familiarity with the major DSM-5-TR diagnoses and the wide variety of cases that may be found in exam questions, licensing tests, or your social work practice. For each case, the answer key provides possible risk factors, diversity considerations, ethical and legal concerns, treatment issues, and possible diagnoses. Using the SHADE acronym (suicide, homicide, abuse, drugs or alcohol, eating disorder, and elder abuse) as a foundation for remembering risk factors, the dynamic answer key provides answers where appropriate and guidance to navigate the gray areas.

You will be trained to ask yourself:

  • What are the significant issues present in the case?
  • What are the cultural, racial, ethnic, and other diversity considerations?
  • What ethical and legal issues might occur?
  • What transference and countertransference issues might come up during treatment?
  • What are the possible diagnoses?
  • What theoretical approach should be used?
  • Who is the identified patient?
  • What assessment tools will you use?
  • What is your treatment plan?
  • What interventions would you use?

Whether you are a social work student, aspiring counselor, or practicing clinician, 80 Clinical Vignettes for Test Taking, Licensing Exam Prep, and Practical Applications will help you increase your diagnostic skills and ability to recognize risk factors in the classroom, on tests and licensing exams, and in the field.

Introduction
General Tips for Studying for State and National Licensing Exams
General Strategies for Multiple-Choice Questions

Fact Sheets

  1. Risk Factors/Crisis Management
  2. Human Diversity
  3. Legal Requirements
  4. Ethical Standards
  5. Biopsychosocial Assessment
  6. Developing a Diagnostic Impression
  7. Planning Treatment and Setting Goals
  8. Case Management
  9. Providing Therapeutic Interventions

Useful Resources
80 Clinical Vignettes
Answer Key

References
Index
About the Author

Liz B. Johnston, PhD, LCSW, is associate professor of social work at California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo. In her private practice, she specializes in addiction recovery and healing from PTSD/trauma. She has facilitated a frontal temporal dementia caregiver support group since 2016. Dr. Johnston received her MSW (1984) and PhD (2013) from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Since 1984, she has worked in a variety of counseling agencies, private practice, and medical social work. The cases in this book are based on her experiences in these settings.

For her 2012 dissertation, Dr. Johnston studied older adults who had experienced critical illness; in 2017 and 2022, she completed five- and 10-year longitudinal studies of the surviving participants. She has published research on a range of topics, including techniques to reduce staff stress during hospital renovation, the impact of critical illness on older adults, complications of social support, a theoretical reconsideration of paranoia, and a psychological understanding of social media connections to the gang-stalking phenomena.

Dr. Johnston has four young adult children who live across the United States and in Canada. She loves having them home for visits and looks forward to future grandchildren. In her free time, she likes to take walks with her two small, highly neurotic rescue dogs; garden; swim; and volunteer for her church and community.

Introduction (pdf)

Earn 8.5 CEUs for reading this title! For more information, visit the Social Work Online CE Institute.