Re: [OTlist] Student Inservice

[Mike]

From my experience of being a student (7 years ago), what mattered most was the 'wow' factor -- a sense that the team and supervisor I was placed with were skilled professionals who think critically about what they do and how they can improve it. You also need to feel that the supervisor and team are welcoming and supportive, approachable and open to questions. This is a bit inchoate, but so it goes. In some places you get a feeling that having a student is something they feel obliged rather than motivated to do, and this doesn't make for a great placement. You have to ensure that students feel you're glad to have a student and are keen to pass on the skills that you value having. You don't want a supervisor who gives a sense of being stressed, jaded, disillusioned, and so on.

You also need to make sure that you consensually agree a set of clear, measurable and achievable aims and objectives for the placement. This should be done toward the end of the first week and reviewed weekly thereafter. This ensures that, even if the personal relationship is questionable, the student knows just what they need to do to make the grade. It also makes it easier for the supervisor to grade the student's performance when filling in the interminable and unfathomable forms the college tutors have devised.

The learning must be as practical and hands-on as possible, because it's in doing that we learn best. The first placement, usually characterised as primarily observational, is probably the most difficult for the supervisor in this respect. In my field (community physical) this usually means getting the student to write up case notes and assessments, fit equipment, start problem-solving on the way back from home visits, do diagrams and plans for home adaptations, that kind of thing.

I take about 2 students a year as a fieldwork educator and the feedback forms they fill in more or less reflect the above. From the fieldwork educator's point of view, the positive aspect of having a student is that it keeps you on your toes -- makes you think about what you do, why and how -- more than you otherwise would. The questions raised by an outsider can be quite illuminating in making you think critically about how you work.

Your best resource for answering this question may well be your fellow students, as they're the ones that are having direct, contemporary experience of the fieldwork experience. There must be some among your cohort who have had particularly positive or negative experiences that you can draw on -- and if you or anyone else can post examples of these to the list, I'm sure it would be interesting. Likewise, it would be interesting to hear from OTs who have had difficult experiences of supervising a student and how they dealt with it.
--
Cheers,
Mike Griffin (London, UK)
www.otdirect.co.uk



On Saturday, Nov 1, 2003, at 22:35 Europe/London, erin willmore wrote:

I am currently an OT student and would like some information for my inservice. The therapists I work with requested that I do an inservice on what students like and dislike about their�clinical instructors�and how we as students prefer�to learn. If anyone could give me some feedback on their internships describing what they liked and disliked with the ways they were taught or just any insight into their experiences, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks so much. Have a great weekend!

Erin :)

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