The first phone call

If you’re considering whether or not to self-report or reach out to one of the professional health programs for assistance, read through the information on this site first. I would encourage you to schedule an introductory call, and let’s talk about your situation before you make that self-report. Talk to me first, and know what you’re getting into before you talk to them.

They’ll take some minimal information, just personal information, and then typically schedule a call or a meeting with you. That’s the whole thing.

It’s short and it’s administrative, and it’s over a lot faster than you expect after however long you spent working up to making it. Whether you called them yourself or somebody told you to call, the intake is the same.

The email afterward is often the surprise: releases, questionnaires, and requests for records. The paperwork that usually comes next is written up on its own, for the stretch after you hang up.

Basic information about what happened. Not a life history and not an interrogation. Enough for them to know who you are and what they’re scheduling.

Lying. Any lying or minimizing of what happened that’s actually bringing you there is typically the most common mistake.

Here’s why that matters more than it looks. These programs are on our side, basically. They’re there to try and help us. It may not always seem that way, but they are, and the fastest way to ruin that relationship is to lie to them or skip over facts that are going to come out anyway. It always puts them in a better position to advocate for us if they know everything from the beginning.

One thing, and it’s easy to miss because you’re braced for a harder conversation than the one you get.

Ask whether there are any prohibitions or recommendations about your practice right now. There’s a gap between this first contact and the point where an evaluation is done and recommendations are in place, and it can run weeks. What you’re allowed to be doing during that stretch is the thing to have clear before you hang up.

Beyond that, the useful thing isn’t a list of questions. It’s knowing that this call is short and administrative, and that the conversation that matters is the meeting they’re about to schedule.

That meeting is the next page, and it’s worth reading before you sit in it.

Whether your board is involved at all. Whether your employer already knows, or is about to. What happens to your license and your schedule between now and the meeting. How fast any of it moves.

Those genuinely vary, by profession, by state, and by how you got here. The shape of the call doesn’t vary much at all.

On the license question specifically: losing it is always a possibility, since practicing any of our professions is considered a privilege and not a right. Neither I nor an attorney can tell you what’s going to happen in your case.

What I can say is that the best way to get the best result is to be cooperative and compliant with this part of the process. Detailed and complicated procedural questions are best answered by someone from your board or a licensing attorney.