Personal Narrative: A Career As A Clinical Assistant

It is very important to provide feedback to the learners now and then during their learning process. Swann (2002) states that a good clinical instructor is the one who demonstrates an ability to provide feedback to the learners related to their skill performance and behaviors. Various roles of the clinical instructor should be multifaceted and include various responsibilities such as facilitating, supervising, coaching, guiding, consulting, teaching, evaluating, counseling, advising, career planning, role modeling, mentoring, and socializing (Jensen & Mostrom, 2013). Providing frequent feedback to students during their clinical practice by the clinical instructor is more recognized as an important part of undergraduate and graduate health sciences

But, I would like to share one of my experience of being a single physical therapist in an outpatient setting and providing a feedback to one of the staff members. In a clinical setting, we also have a physical therapy assistant and a physical therapy (PT) aide. The PT aide is also a certified massage therapist and started working with us two months ago. She is very intelligent, well experienced, punctual, hard working, and dedicated to work. She has been always up to set the patient up with modalities and to provide massage in the affected regions of the body as per patient's requirement, and plan of care. I have never heard any complaints regarding her work from any of the patients. However, the patients have always remarked regarding her behavior, stating that she never smiles or interact at all and every time enters the room with some strange reactions on her face. After receiving the same complaint about PT aide from the number of patients, I decided to talk with her regarding the problem and solve it. I wrote all the points including positive and negative in a piece of a paper, and discussed regarding this with the PT assistant as well as asked for her opinion too. Based on this collected and observed information, I decided to talk with the PT aide and explain the real

Before I say something, surprisingly she asked for my feedback by herself and asked for an advice for any changes she is supposed to make in her work style. As per her request, I provided feedback including her positive and negative points. I started with positive points and appreciated her service towards the patient's requirement related to his problem. Furthermore, I added that she has been doing a great job, and appreciated her dedication and hard work. Later, I pointed out her weak point that is her behavior towards the patients. I made my point very nicely by telling her that it is not necessary to speak continuously with the patients during the entire treatment period but, she should build a rapport with them in order to make them comfortable. She understood everything I said and appreciated my feedback. Also, promised me that she will try to improve her interaction with the