My T makes himself ridiculously accessible to me. I can leave him messages or emails whenever I want and he will always respond. Sometimes he even responds if I say, "You don't need to respond." I don't know what "after hours" means with my T, but if you are asking if he calls me when he is not physically in the office, yes, all the time. Plus, he reads and sends all emails from home because there is no internet access in the office.

Like Rapunzel, I can also look at it from a Ts perspective. At my agency, we do not have any after-hours correspondence with our patients. I carry a caseload of over 115 patients, so that would be just a bit out of control. They can call me anytime they want, but I can only get back to them when I am actually in the office. They are provided and educated with resources in case there is an after-hours emergency. It is hard for me because there is very little time in my day as T to even go to the bathroom, let alone call a patient to speak with them for any length of time. So far, I have not encountered this more than once or twice because I am just getting to know all of my patients. I am meeting them for the first time, and so far, I have initial-session patients scheduled into the last week of June. I imagine as I get to develop a relationship with the patients who come on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, phone calls will begin to pop-up more and I will have to find a way to allow time for that.

I finally understand why our T's sometimes simply might not have the time to get back to us. The other day, my T called me and he said it was literally the only time in the entire day he had to make the phone call-- now I see why! I know he doesn't have 115+ patients, but he does a lot of out-of-office things as well-- talks, workshops, groups, things like that.

I have no idea how many patients my T sees, but I can only hope they all aren't as needy as me, otherwise he would never get to sleep, lol.