Monday, 28 May 2007

Feedback Issues- Better Late Than Never??

Hi guys,
this is an issue that I had on my first placement and although it has already been and gone I still want to discuss it and what I could have done differently, as due to nerves and lack of confidence I feel that I handled the situation poorly. My first prac was neuro (lucky me!) on a stroke rehab unit and I found it to be an extremely daunting process. As i had never seen a stroke pt before the biggest thing i struggled with was knowing when to progress the pt to more difficult tasks/exercises. Each stroke pt is so varied, as is their rate of recovery.
As you can imagine I was desperately needing feedback from my supervisor as to how i was travelling and what exactly i needed to improve on. My supervisor, however, was extremely busy and had her own patients to treat (simultaneously to us treating our patients). There was mention of an informal mid-placement assessment but it never actually happened. I received some feedback from the curtain tutor when they came out for their allocated time spot, but this was based on them supervising me on a single occassion and as you know your facility supervisor has a better idea of how you are travelling in general. The afternoon before our final assessment our supervisor only had time to give feedback to one of us and I was not that lucky person! So as you can imagine I was pretty worried going into my final assessment having had no feedback at all over the entire course of the prac from my facility supervisor. I was finally given feedback after I had completed my final assessment. Although this feedback was still helpful, I felt that the areas I needed to improve on, were things i could have worked on over the course of the prac if I was only aware of them.
Myself and the other student did let our supervisor know that next time it would be helfpful if she gave more feedback during the prac, and I also expressed this in my opinion of teaching form, but this of course is no longer beneficial to us.
As a result of this I do not feel totally confident that I could walk into a neuro job tomorrow, although I passed and was competent in all areas I don't feel that I developed as much as I would have liked to on this prac. Partly because of the supervisor not giving me feedback, and partly because I did not act on this situation. Can anybody make any suggestions about how they would have approached the situation?

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