How To Become A Senior Clinician: What It Is and Career Path

What is a senior clinician and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted Expert

Stephanie Chalk

The average senior clinician salary is $57,908. The most common degree is a master's degree degree with an social work major. It usually takes 2-4 years of experience to become a senior clinician. Senior clinicians with a Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) certification earn more money. Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 14% and produce 9,100 job opportunities across the U.S.

What general advice would you give to a Senior Clinician?

Stephanie Chalk

Associate Director of the School of Counseling at Marymount University, Marymount University

Competence in trauma-informed care is very important and will only continue to become more important to our work as counselors in a post-COVID world. Counselors will need to have a strong understanding of how to assess for trauma and environmental stressors, and how trauma can impact clients and communities. Having the skills to adequately assess and support client safety, enhance client choice and empowerment, and the ability to work collaboratively as an interdisciplinary team with other professionals is going to become an even more valuable skill set for counselors. Counselors often work with psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, nurse practitioners, school systems, social workers, occupational therapists, and many other professionals as a part of a care team. Having strong collaboration, leadership, and interpersonal skills are becoming more important as the role of counselors is becoming more salient in healthcare.

ScoreSenior ClinicianUS Average

Salary

4.5

Avg. Salary $57,908

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability Level

9.8

Growth Rate 14%

Growth Rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.4

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.48%

Asian 4.57%

Black or African American 6.97%

Hispanic or Latino 13.94%

Unknown 5.53%

White 68.51%

Gender

female 67.50%

male 32.50%

Age - 38

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 38

Stress Level

9.8

Stress level is very high

7.1 - high

Complexity Level

10.0

Complexity Level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work Life Balance

6.2

Work Life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

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Key steps to become a senior clinician

Explore senior clinician education requirements

Most common senior clinician degrees

Master's

45.5 %

Bachelor's

42.3 %

Doctorate

5.3 %

Start to develop specific senior clinician skills

Skills	Percentages
Social Work	29.51%
Patients	11.49%
Substance Abuse	6.12%
Group Therapy Sessions	4.59%
Clinical Services	3.79%

Research senior clinician duties and responsibilities

Utilize strengths base approach as well as DBT and CBT techniques.
Develop rehabilitation programs for assign offenders or inmates, establishing rules of conduct, goals, and objectives.
Assist in providing parenting skills training, individual skill building, individual and family rehabilitation, and case management.
Facilitate DBT groups and offer training and support to clinicians around understanding the concepts and principles of this treatment approach.

Get senior clinician experience

Generally, it takes 2-4 years to become a senior clinician. The most common roles before becoming a senior clinician include clinician, internship team lead and therapist.

Prepare your senior clinician resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your senior clinician resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a senior clinician resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

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Apply for senior clinician jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a senior clinician job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams

How do senior clinicians rate their job?

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Senior Clinician reviews

A zippia user wrote a review on Jan 2022

Pros

Making a difference in someone's life. Seeing positive changes.