Effects of an Adapted Telehealth Training Curriculum for Registered Behavior Technicians®.
Three Zoom BST sessions let RBTs master caregiver coaching and run solo telehealth visits.
01Research in Context
What this study did
MacNaul et al. (2022) built a short telehealth course for seven RBTs.
The course used Behavioral Skills Training: explain, show, practice, give feedback.
After three rounds, each RBT had to coach a brand-new family alone on Zoom.
What they found
Every RBT hit mastery during training.
Each one then ran a full parent-coaching session with 90-100% fidelity.
No one needed extra practice or in-person help.
How this fits with other research
Neely et al. (2022) ran the same idea with BCBAs and got the same result.
Together the two papers show the brief telehealth BST recipe works for both credential levels.
Higgins et al. (2017) did an earlier telehealth BST package for preference assessments.
Their three-step model—video, feedback, role-play—lives on in the new RBT course.
Slane et al. (2021) reviewed twenty BST studies and found high fidelity across jobs.
The RBT study adds one more dot to that same pattern.
Why it matters
You can train RBTs to coach families without bringing anyone to the clinic.
Three short Zoom meetings save drive time, mileage, and staff hours.
If your waitlist is long, let new RBTs learn the caregiver-coaching role from their laptop and free your BCBAs for assessments.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
We evaluated a telehealth training curriculum to prepare Registered Behavior Technicians® (RBTs®) to conduct caregiver coaching on behavior analytic skills via telehealth. A non-concurrent multiple baseline across therapists design was used to evaluate the training procedures delivered by Board Certified Behavior Analysts® (BCBAs®). All therapists (RBTs) worked with one family during the baseline and training phases and an additional session was conducted with a different family during the novelty probe condition to see if therapists were able to perform the newly acquired skills without BCBA support. Seven therapists who received behavioral skills training on the curriculum reached mastery criteria within three sessions. All RBTs were able to provide caregiver coaching via telehealth with high degrees of fidelity and were able to independently conduct a telehealth session with a new family without support from the BCBA. Results of the current study provide support for the use of the telehealth training curriculum to prepare RBTs to conduct ABA services via telehealth.
Advances in Neurodevelopmental Disorders, 2022 · doi:10.1007/s41252-022-00285-3