For Practicum Supervisors
I am Micheal (Mike) Bonertz — a registered pharmacist in British Columbia and a student in the Master of Psychotherapy and Spirituality (Counselling stream) at St. Stephen's College, University of Alberta. I am looking for a 600-hour supervised counselling practicum in Metro Vancouver, beginning July 2027.
A counsellor who happens to be a pharmacist \u2014 someone who can sit with a person and also read their medication list properly.
This page exists so you can decide quickly whether I am worth a conversation.
What I am asking for
A supervised student placement, July 2027 to June 2028, at a clinic doing legal psychedelic-assisted or ketamine-assisted work. The College's structure is 600 hours: direct client contact, indirect hours, and supervision — 35 supervision hours at the site and 25 through the course. Professional liability coverage of five million dollars is carried through the programme.
I am a student. I am not a psychotherapist, not a registered clinical counsellor, and I do not hold a protected title. Everything I would do at your site would be under your supervision, inside your scope, and to your standards.
What I would bring that a typical student does not
I have been a licensed pharmacist for sixteen years, and have worked in pharmacies for more than twenty years all told, across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the Northwest Territories. I am registered with the College of Pharmacists of British Columbia in the Full Pharmacist class, in good standing, and I hold full prescriptive authority under British Columbia's minor ailments scope.
In practice that means a student who already reads a medication list the way you would want one read: serotonergic load, MAOI interactions, tapering realities, QT risk, the difference between a drug interaction that matters and one that only looks alarming on a screen. Screening is where psychedelic-assisted care is most exposed, and it is the part of the work I have spent a career inside.
I have also written and volunteered in this field for several years — with MAPS Canada's Special Access Program Community of Practice, TheraPsil, and the Psychedelic Association of Canada — and I have contributed to published policy and public-education work on compassionate access.
What I am looking for in a site
- Real therapy delivery, not only intake and administration. The programme's hours need to be relational counselling work.
- A supervisor willing to observe directly — co-facilitated sessions, live sit-in, or recorded sessions reviewed in supervision. Direct observation is the hardest requirement to satisfy after the fact and the easiest to design in from the start.
- Honesty about what the placement can and cannot offer. A smaller, well-supervised placement is worth more to me than a large one with thin oversight.
What happens next
If any of this is useful to you, I would welcome a short conversation — no commitment, no paperwork. I can supply a candidate profile, a clinical CV, and referees who have already agreed to speak for me.
Email: mbonertz@ualberta.ca
- What a Pharmacist Adds to a Counselling Team — the case for the unusual candidate, and its honest limits
- Medication Safety Screening in Psychedelic Care — what careful screening involves
- Education and Credentials — everything I hold, and what it does not qualify me to do
- Publications and Contributions — exact credit for collaborative work
- Practicum FAQ — the questions clinics actually ask
- Harm Reduction in Practice — habits rather than philosophy
- Rural, Remote and Northern Practice — what changes when the referral is not available
- Two-Eyed Seeing — Elder Albert Marshall's framing, and why it matters here
- About This Archive — how to read the older material on this site
This site is education and policy literacy only. It is not medical advice, a diagnosis, a prescription, or an offer of psychedelic-assisted therapy.