If you are a therapist with an insatiably curious mind, one way that you can satisfy your immense need for lifelong learning is to attend the workshops conducted by the University of the Philippines College of Allied Medical Professions (UP CAMP). I’ve attended two of them. On both occasions, I came away feeling that my brain was rewired for the better because I’ve developed fresher perspectives on health science education. The workshop on reflective practice, in particular, made me realize many things about clinical supervision.
The Two Extremes
It dawned on me that universities are now placing more emphasis on the students’ mental health compared to how they did in the previous decades. That in itself is awesome! During the reflective practice workshop, I learned that there are many ways of diplomatically giving feedback to interns such as the SET-GO Model and the One-Minute Preceptor. When I was an occupational therapy (OT) intern, we had a One-Second Preceptor: because a certain clinical supervisor (CS) found us annoying, he gave us “feedback” by hauling a chair at us from across the room and screaming, “Keep it down! ANG INGAY!” It was abusive, yes, but many other CSes were way worse, if you can imagine that. The psychological abuse made the environment detrimental to learning.
That’s why I’m happy that we health science educators are now taking the necessary steps to promote our students’ mental health. The question now is, which teaching practices are good for their well-being and which ones are damaging? After all, we need to be careful not to swing towards the other extreme wherein the patients’ welfare is disregarded because the interns’ emotions are setting the agenda.
From the Inside-Out
A few days after the reflective practice seminar, I was tasked to conduct a workshop on professional behaviors for our incoming interns at the UP CAMP Clinic for Therapy Services. My fellow CSes and I structured the program in such a way that it would focus on character development. That’s because even if they are crucial in one’s career, professional behaviors are merely the manifestations of the kind of person that you are deep inside. Therefore, external conduct can be faked in order to get good grades and earn accolades. It will then get thrown out of the window to the detriment of the patients’ health once it’s no longer reinforced by external rewards.
For the Gen Z OT interns, we contrasted genuine good character with two of their biggest preoccupations: projecting a good public image and occupational balance. During the workshop, we discussed techniques on how one can be a person of integrity and not just someone who can humble-brag about their inclusivity and achievements on social media.
The key to becoming a truly good individual in the student clinicians’ context is for them to humbly accept the difficulties of internship by fulfilling the requirements to the best of their abilities even when they feel like losing heart. Only when the clinical rotations expose their weaknesses will they learn to overcome them FOR THEIR PATIENTS’ SAKE. But because many Gen Z students harbor a sense of entitlement over their narrow ideas of mental health and occupational balance, they feel justified to resort to ghosting, gaslighting, and tantrums when their safe spaces are threatened. Gen Z allied health students thus miss out on opportunities to have their flaws corrected and their horizons expanded.
Lessons That We Will Never Outgrow
The noblest deeds that therapists do will never be glamorized on social media. People will even oppose you if you do what’s ethical and scientific. Yet they must be done for our patients’ sake! Therefore, to paraphrase what Coach Kugimiya Munehiro said, we must develop uprightness in character as the foundation first before we train the skills.
I’ve witnessed personally how so-called excellent people who lack integrity can ruin the well-being of others just because they want to be considered as the best. They abandon their families, hurt their clients, malign their co-workers, and cheat in competitions because they are addicted to accolades. Even if I detested my hostile yet inept CSes when I was an intern, God used them to show me that I was emotionally dependent on other people’s approval. By giving me opportunities to work with CSes who I could never please, I became used to accepting my limitations and doing what’s right even without recognition. I’m still far from being a perfect therapist yet by God’s grace, the trajectory of my life has been one of repentance.
I don’t endorse abusive clinical training, obviously. But what the devil intended for harm, God turned around into experiences that built in me the resiliency to withstand the pressures of professional practice. It also developed in me a deeper appreciation for the good CSes and mentors that I’ve had. Because the latter are competent and compassionate, they serve as my role models until now when it comes to patient handling and professionalism despite their own shortcomings. They too reprimanded me harshly. But that’s because they prioritized my well-being over how I would feel about them.
Thank you, Lord, for the CSes, professors, counselors, and coaches who rebuked us! Without them, we will always be harboring delusions about our competence and morality instead of being good in reality.
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