What Counts as Direct Client Contact Hours Under AHPRA?

Why this number matters

The Psychology Board of Australia requires provisional registrants to accumulate a minimum of 500 direct client contact hours during supervised practice, with up to 60 of those hours permitted to be simulated. This requirement exists to ensure you develop genuine hands-on clinical skills across a range of presentations before practising independently.

Failing to meet this minimum — even if every other supervised practice requirement is satisfied — means you cannot apply for general registration. Clarity on what counts is not a paperwork exercise; it directly determines whether your year achieves its goal.

Activities that qualify as direct client contact

The Psychology Board defines direct client contact as time spent in face-to-face (or equivalent) professional interactions where you are providing psychological services to a client or clients. Qualifying activities include:

• Individual therapy sessions (CBT, ACT, schema therapy, psychodynamic, and other evidence-based modalities)
• Psychological assessment sessions — clinical interviews, psychometric testing, neuropsychological assessment, and feedback sessions
• Group therapy sessions where you are the facilitating therapist
• Couples and family therapy sessions
• Crisis intervention and formal risk assessment sessions
• Consultation-liaison work where you are providing direct psychological input to a patient
• Telehealth sessions where the client is present and receiving a direct psychological service

Simulated client contact (up to 60 hours)

The Psychology Board allows up to 60 of your 500 required client contact hours to be simulated. Acceptable simulated contact typically includes structured role-play exercises, standardised patient interactions, simulation laboratory activities, and supervised skills practice where another person plays the role of a client.

Not all role-play automatically qualifies. The simulation must be structured, skills-focused, and conducted under the direct oversight of your principal supervisor. Casual practice with a colleague or sessions you arrange independently are unlikely to meet the standard. Always confirm with your supervisor before you count simulated hours.

What does NOT count as direct client contact

This is where many interns make mistakes. A large proportion of any clinical placement involves activities that are clinically essential but do not count toward your 500-hour minimum:

• Case note writing and clinical documentation (even immediately after a session)
• Clinical file review and session preparation
• Supervision sessions with your principal or secondary supervisor
• Multidisciplinary team meetings and case conferences (unless the client is present and you are actively providing a service)
• Training, CPD, and professional development activities (these count toward Section B education hours)
• Administrative tasks: scheduling, phone triage, correspondence, report writing
• Research activities without active client contact
• Observation only — watching another clinician work without yourself providing any service

How to record client contact correctly in your logbook

In Section A of your AHPRA logbook, each direct client contact entry should include: the date the activity occurred, a client identifier (initials or a numerical code — never a full name), the type of activity, the relevant AHPRA competency area or areas, the duration in hours and minutes, and a brief professional description of what took place.

Entries should be made contemporaneously — at or near the time of the activity. Reconstructing weeks of entries at month-end is a compliance risk that an auditor reviewing the metadata and edit history of a digital logbook will readily identify.

Common recording mistakes to avoid

One frequent error is conflating session preparation and documentation with the session itself. If a session runs 50 minutes and you spent 20 minutes writing notes afterwards, your direct client contact for that entry is 50 minutes, not 70.

Another common mistake is misrecording group therapy hours. A two-hour group session with six clients is two hours of your direct client contact — not twelve. The Psychology Board counts your clinical hours, not the aggregate of all client time in the room.