Introduction:
A BCBA or a Board Certified Behaviour Analyst is an important healthcare professional who studies children’s behavior and plans to improve or change certain problematic behaviors. Board Certified Behaviour Analysts are usually called upon to help people suffering from developmental disabilities or brain injuries. Board-Certified Behaviour Analysts are also called upon to help fix emotional, social, or behavioral problems and issues. BCBAs can also help treat predetermined groups of patients such as children, autism and other mental disorders, or the elderly. The responsibilities of the BCBA are to ensure the comfort and safety of the patients they undertake the treatment responsibilities of. They must ensure that the patient does not feel uneasy while undergoing the behavior analysis and treatment. We will discuss BCBA Job Description here.
BCBA Job Description
A Board Certified Behaviour Analyst or a BCBA is the one who is assigned to analyze behavioral traits of various kinds of patients that can be suffering from developmental disorders, brain injuries, emotional trauma, or social and behavioral problems. It is the behavioral analyst’s job to isolate and identify the problem and then try to remedy it by applying various behavior changing methods and tricks to influence the patient’s behavior and bring about change. As a Board Certified Behavioural Analyst, the analyst has several duties and rules expected to fulfill and not neglect while trying to analyze and change someone’s behavior. Additional duties that must be performed correctly by the BCBA to make sure the behavior of a person is analyzed and influenced corrects are:
Meeting with the patient:
A BCBA needs to do this once they are assigned a patient to visit them and analyze them. The BCBA needs to meet the patient to fully understand the problem and how the behavior needs to be changed to fix the problem. They need to meet the patient to observe and assess their behavior to develop the best course of action and treatment for the patients themselves.
Meeting the patient’s points of contact:
The next most important task the Board Certified Behaviour Analyst must undertake to identify the patient’s problems correctly, and behavior patterns are to meet the patient’s person patient’s persons. This includes family, friends, and other doctors of the patient. They can provide an insight into the key aspects of the patient’s behavior and help the BCBA understand the patient and the patient history with relative ease and accuracy. This knowledge comes in handy when analyzing the patient and coming up with possible action courses to start a behavioral change.
Developing individual plans:
Once the Board Certified Behaviour Analyst has understood the behavior of the patient and identified the problem areas that need to be changed, retrained, or modified, the BCBA needs to be able to come up with individual plans to change the current behavior, teach the new behavior and make sure the patient does not forget the behavioral change causing a lapse back into older habits. The plans need to be individual and focused solely on the purpose of either unlearning, relearning, or remembering since it can be hard to change the behavior of an individual, particularly one who has a history of either mental illness or emotional or behavioral problems. This is why each plan needs to be very focused and specific to ensure that the message is passed on and interpreted correctly by the intended recipient.
Setting and Meeting Behavioural Goals:
The BCBA needs to help the client set realistic goals and come up with a reasonable plan of action to help the client achieve those goals. Setting realistic goals and achieving them helps give the client a sense of progress and satisfaction, helping them keep their morale up and keep working towards changing their behavior one step at a time. It gives the client reason to celebrate and keep working towards bettering themselves and maintaining a positive outlook throughout their treatment.
Keeping detailed notes of patients meetings and progress:
The Board Certified Behaviour Analyst is also supposed to keep detailed notes of all patient meetings and keep constant track of the patients’ progress. This can become useful when the BCBA needs to refer to past meetings to notice how the patient’s behavior has changed. Keeping track of patients progress also makes sure that the BCBA can see the rate at which the patient is progressing and also show family, friends, and doctors of the patient the results so that they can put their mind at ease knowing that the treatment is working at a particular pace by referring to the notes and progress trackers.
Using methods such as reinforcement and conditioning:
Behavior and behavioral changes are strongly related to the field of psychology. Using positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and conditioning behavioral changes are ways where behavioral psychology and its teachings can influence and change behavior. Such methods help further change behavior and can increase the rate at which behavior change occurs. On top of this, other methods exist in behavioral psychology to help and aid Board Certified Behavior Analysts to better treat the patient and ensure that the behavior change takes place sooner rather than later.
Research and Analysis:
Another significant factor that Board Certified Behaviour Analysts need to keep in mind is constantly researching and coming up with alternative courses of treatments and other practices to help change behavior and help enforce it. Since the human mind is still being discovered and studied further, new methods of influencing the mind and bringing about change keep popping up in scientific journals and all across the web.
Conclusion:
The job of a BCBA is one that requires a high level of education and dedicated hours of practice to get enough experience and credentials to be approved by the American Board of Psychology. However, this hard work does pay off, since Board Certified Behavior Analysts can earn up to a hundred and thirty thousand dollars. This job requires constant attention, care, and willingness to persevere and try out new behavioral change methods. This makes the job of a board-certified behavior analyst both demanding and rewarding at the same time.
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