Feedback that Motivates and Enhances Learning in Clinical Education

This text-based course is a transcript of the webinar, “Feedback that Motivates & Enhances Learning in Clinical Education,” presented by Nancy Alarcon, MS, CCC-SLP, BC-ANCDS.  >> Nancy Alarcon:  I think this is an engaging topic and very timely, as we are in the early part of our academic year.  It is always exciting to think about how we can enhance what we do when we are working with our graduate clinicians.  AcknowledgementsEllen Reuler and I had a number of opportunities quite a few years ago to do a few presentations on supervision.  She is a wonderful collaborator as a clinical educator at Pacific University.  I thank her for really inspiring me to do more in-service education in the area of clinical education.  Today, I may weave in a story or two about my own personal experiences, and I am grateful for my colleagues and our students here at the University of Washington.  I have to say I continue to grow and learn every day despite how many students I have worked with over my years of service here.  I am amazed at the opportunities that are presented that I have not experienced before.  It is a very rich and rewarding opportunity when we do get to supervise or clinically educate individuals, whether they actually happen to be speech language pathologists or audiologists or they may be our professional staff or colleagues.  I thank my mentors as well.  I would encourage you to thank those who came before you, whom you have relied upon to be the person you are today.  ObjectivesI am excited that we can take some time to think about the desired outcomes of feedback in a clinical education relationship.  Again, I will refer to this within our graduate programs, because that is really the bulk of where we are doing our work in audiology and speech language pathology, whether you are in a four-year program and you happen to have students in year one, or in their fourth year externship, or possibly in the clinical fellowship rotation. We will talk about the difference between feedback and evaluation.  To be quite candid, it is so often the case that we are hung up in evaluation mode and our students may as well think about that.  They want to know if they are okay and if they are going to pass.  Quite honestly, you and I are the gatekeepers wherever we may be working, whether it is in a hospital, school, or university environment.  In essence, we are holding the keys for them to be able to enter into the professional realm.  We will talk about the challenges of both giving feedback and receiving it from the individuals for whom we are responsible.  Hopefully, I will provide you with a little framework for constructive and motivating feedback.  Clinical Education vs. SupervisionLet’s focus on the semantics of how we are talking about this today.  You may wonder why first off we talk about this topic, the words “supervision” and “clinical education.”  It is quite interesting that across the country, there is a cultural shift to think of us as clinical educators.  In some circles, the idea of using the word “supervisor” or “supervisee” may be considered as punitive or a dominating relationship.  I myself have grown up using the word “supervisor” and in a supervisory relationship, I am very comfortable with it.  I would take this as much more of a positive perspective on the relationship, but I do want to be sensitive and also use the framework of “clinical educator/clinical education” as we talk with our colleagues in the community.  In reality, no matter where you are working and what level of student or new employee you are working with, you are educating them on how to function clinically.  That phrase “clinical educator/clinical education” is really relevant, but I also think we should be comfortable using the word “supervision”; it is a personal choice.  As we reflect on this, I am sure as you think about your career and how you became the person you are today, there are oftentimes cases where you think a certain person was the most wonderful mentor.  They were supporting.  They were nurturing.  They were empowering.  They were inspiring.  I am sure there are people who are following this program and thinking that there were those instances where something went wrong.  I would not want to do what this person did to me.  I would not want to be a particular type of supervisor who is - and maybe some of those words that come to mind might be - dominating, controlling, or manipulating.  I would welcome you to enter a few other terms that come to mind that are on the negative side, as we talk.  We do need to be very aware of how our students are thinking about the relationship with us.  What is it that we are bringing to the table and how are we presenting ourselves? Model of SupervisionMy hope is that we think about why we want to contribute.  Why do we want to help to develop the next generation of audiologists and speech language pathologists?  I think that then helps us to think about what we would like to emulate, and certainly a cardinal part of that is our conversation today about feedback.  I always like to provide a little bit more context and I am going to bring you to a visual map in a moment that I think is a fabulous tool for you to use as you are talking with the person that you are responsible for.  It can begin to lay out a pathway to think about the clinical education trajectory.  To put it in context, many of you may recognize the name of Dr. Jean Anderson, who is emeritus faculty at Indiana University.  Many of us regard her as the mother of supervision in our professions.  There are many wonderful stories about Dr. Anderson.  Some of her work is republished in McCrea and Brasseur’s book (2003), which is still available...