Differing Opinions

On my last placement i had 2 supervisors at the facility and 1 Curtin supervisor whom we saw quite frequently throughout the week. Having 3 different supervisors meant that very often we had 3 different treatment approaches. All of them were quite familiar with our patient caseload so each of them were able to offer quite specific suggestions for our treatment plan. This made it quite difficult as it is impossible to always try and use all three suggestions in some combination. For the most part, however, that is what i tried to do. I tried to accommodate all suggestions and use them with the patient to see which had the best effect for that patient and then continued to use that one for the next few sessions. I learnt that sometimes you can't apply all suggestions...sometimes you have to modify the suggestion based on the patient's cognitive level, communication difficulties or co-ordination issues. On all occasions you have to use your own clinical judgement because you are spending more time than anyone with the patient and so the reality is you know their impairments and challenges better than anyone.

I learnt from this experience that much of the time you have to adapt the information that is given to you by senior staff members and use your own clinical judgement to best treat your patients. The aspect I found most beneficial when receiving 3 different opinions is that sometimes if you combine 2 or 3 of the suggestions you get an outcome that is much better than anything you would have thought of and better than just one sole suggestion.