Professional Issues Strand

Issues to Address

• Difficulties defining ‘Professional Issues’ – for course staff and trainees.

• Finding what is unique and essential about PI.

• How to reconcile having standards and guidelines whilst acknowledging grey areas and variations in practice.

What does ‘Professional Issues’ mean?

• In an attempt to better define PI, we propose that it should encompass:– What ‘being professional’ means, both theoretically

and in practise.• The ability to interpret and work within professional

guidance.• The ability to make professional decisions when guidance is

unclear.

– Fostering a sense of ‘belongingness’ to the profession of clinical psychology.

– The ability to both question and promote/communicate the value of the profession.

Challenges for Teaching and Learning

• How to teach ‘being professional’ when this might have a slightly different meaning to every clinical psychologist, yet each one of (or at least most of) these meanings is equally valid?

• How to help trainees learn how to ‘be professional’ when this might vary in terms of behaviour both between people and for the same person (at different times or in different situations)?

Model of LearningInternally

Constructed Knowledge

(What they already know (but might not

recognise it))

Socially Constructed Knowledge

(What they learn together)

Externally Constructed Knowledge

(What they need to be told)

• Past experience (of success and challenge)

• Intentions (the 'why')

• Personal values(or what they give value to)

• Aspirations

• ‘Professionalism’• Shared values• Shared

commitments• Shared

expectations of 'professional' behaviour

• HPC and BPS• Evidence of 'best

practice'• Knowledge of NHS

context, past and future

Model of Learning

• In this model, ‘professionalism’ becomes a socially-constructed idea.

• It is what we ‘all’ agree as being ‘the right thing to do’.

• This takes PI beyond learning a set of rules with lots of grey areas, to becoming about negotiating your position within a broader, more fluid set of expectations that are agreed amongst people.

Learning JourneyP

re-C

ou

rse Previous

experiences.

Value base.

Star

tin

g O

ut Transition into

professional role.

Identify values.

Professional standards and guidelines.

Value of service user involvement.

Awareness of NHS history and context.

Bei

ng

a Tr

ain

ee Using professional guidance.

Ethical decision-making.

Awareness of impact of difference and diversity.

Awareness of NHS developments and future direction.

Qu

alif

icat

ion Autonomy.

Awareness of 'blind-spots' and needs.

Coping skills.

Time management skills.

Representing, developing and promoting the profession.

PI Year 1

• Year 1: Identity and setting the scene• Understanding and exploring the role of clinical

psychology.• Exploring shared values, ethics and

responsibilities of the profession.• Understanding the role of NHS, HPC and BPS in

guiding practice.• Working effectively at an appropriate level of

autonomy, awareness of the limits of one’s own competence, and accepting accountability to relevant professional and service managers.

PI Year 2

• Year 2: Developing an ethical and professional value-base

• Understanding the impact of one’s own value base upon clinical practice.

• Understanding relevant legal and ethical frameworks, and using these to guide practice.

• Understanding how to involve service users and carers in facilitating service planning and delivery.

• Understanding the impact of differences, diversity and social inequalities on people’s lives, and their implications for professional practice.

PI Year 3

• Year 3: Looking to qualified practice• Understanding relevant developments in NHS

structures and strategy.• Understanding clinical psychology’s changing

position in the NHS context.• Working with increased professional autonomy

and accountability.• Adapting practice to a range of organisational

contexts, on the basis of an understanding of pertinent professional, organisational and cultural issues.

Teaching and Learning Strategy

• To support the development of this socially-constructed knowledge, we propose that learning needs to be through a variety of means, such as didactic teaching, self-reflection, independent reading, but primarily through social collaboration.

• Social collaborative learning fits with the idea of belongingness, in that as a group they move on their journey towards the goal of being a qualified clinical psychologist.

• This could include reflective discussion sessions, seminars, and other collaborative means of learning.

Teaching and Learning Strategy

• This also allows for some variation in what people learn and what they take from the material.

• They all need to know the ‘externally constructed’ knowledge, but can occupy different positions in terms of what ‘being professional’ means for them.

• We can therefore expect some uniqueness in each trainee’s own understanding and definition of professionalism, although all need to understand certain things in the same way (e.g. HPC and BPS standards), and all need to represent the profession appropriately.

Teaching and Learning Methods

• Each placement will have a dedicated Professional Issues strand day, which will consist of a 1 hour seminar, based on independent reading done by trainees in their study time, then 4 hours of reflective discussion time.

• The facilitation team for each PI strand day will ideally consist of a member of course staff or external stakeholder, and a service user representative.

Teaching and Learning Methods

• Trainees will be provided with reading materials via the VLE to support seminar discussions. Topics for the seminars will vary for each placement, but will all be loosely themed around NHS history, context and future developments.

• Each session will finish with 20 minutes or so for trainees to update their reflective log/personal learning journey and share any reflections they wish to.

Teaching and Learning Methods

• Through the 3 years, there will also be some formal teaching sessions. These will include introduction to PI strand and HPC standards and BPS guidelines (1 day), ethical decision-making (0.5 day), service user involvement (0.5 day), legal issues (0.5 day).

Future Plans and Challenges

• Deciding on content of taught sessions.

• Deciding on seminar reading and keeping this up to date.

• Structure and guidelines for reflective sessions.

• Teaching ‘being professional’ in the ‘new NHS’.