AI clinical simulation.
No real clients required.
The Empty Chair is a safe-sandbox AI clinical simulation platform where provisional psychologists practice sessions with psychologically authentic client personas — including informed consent, resistance, emotional escalation, and ethical conundrums — before working with real clients.
- Phase
- Phase 3 — Training & Exam
- Timeline
- Q4 2026
- Module
- The Empty Chair
Provisional psychologists enter the profession with a significant gap between academic knowledge and clinical readiness. There are limited opportunities to rehearse intake interviews, practice informed consent conversations, or navigate ethical dilemmas in real time before their first client.
AI-driven client personas that respond, resist, and escalate in psychologically authentic ways. Every session begins with mandatory informed consent practice. Ethical conundrums trigger mid-session. A competency-mapped debrief identifies strengths and missed opportunities.
Key features
Match wits with an AI client — infinitely repeatable, consequence-free clinical simulation for provisional psychologists.
Informed consent is the foundation.
Clinical practice begins with informed consent — but most trainees have never practised explaining confidentiality limits, mandatory reporting, and record-keeping to a resistant client before their first real session. The Empty Chair makes consent practice mandatory, scoreable, and repeatable.
- Consent stage cannot be skipped — it's first in every session
- AI client challenges, asks clarifying questions, and pushes back
- If explanation is inadequate, client may withdraw consent — trainee must recover
- Correct explanations of limits of confidentiality, mandatory reporting, and records scored
Ethical conundrums in real time.
Ethical dilemmas don't come with a pause button in real clinical work. The Empty Chair triggers conundrums mid-session — the trainee must navigate them in the moment, just as they would with a real client. Every conundrum is tagged to the relevant Psychology Board Code of Conduct principle.
- Duty of care — suicidal plan with means and intent
- Mandatory reporting — disclosure of harm to a minor
- Dual relationship — client is a former lecturer
- Limits of confidentiality — client asks for records to be withheld
Delivery roadmap
Where The Empty Chair sits in the PsychFLOW build sequence.
Works with
PsychFLOW apps that integrate with The Empty Chair.
Ready to try The Empty Chair?
PsychFLOW is built exclusively for Australian psychologists. Australian data residency. AHPRA compliant by design.