Counselling Practice - Becoming a Reflective Practitioner

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THE PROFESSIONAL COUNSELLOR 04 2008 whilst still maintaining enough closeness to be empathetic; this helps to avoid burnout amongst practitioners. Burnout is highlighted towards the end of Chapter 7, as the summation of having extraneous stresses and demands from an inflexible working environment where issues of politics and power may inhibit effective working patterns. Johns talks about assertiveness, the pitfalls of the apparently ‘collaborative’ team and the façade of the ‘harmonious’ team. He gives examples of these in order to show how the working environment can be highly influential in the onset of burnout. After a discussion of burnout, the topics move to prevent or stop more cases occurring through support and adequate debriefing procedures. ‘<strong>Reflective</strong> Communication’ is emphasised as the medium for creating and sustaining care of a consistently high standard with good continuity and effective systems for optimum therapeutic outcomes. Both verbal and non-verbal communication are focused on in relation to confidentiality, client/patient notes, dialogue with other professionals and other ways in which the best continuity of care can be established and maintained. Chapter 9, ‘Assuring Quality’ deals with the governance and supervision as baselines to ensure service delivery is continuously monitored and improved where necessary. In the last chapter, ‘Clinical Leadership and Nurturing the Learning Organisation’ draws attention to the fact that most organisations are only aware of ignorance within their company and work at stamping that out. However the culture of a continuous learning environment can shift the mindset of staff and clients/patients alike. This mindset can be adopted by the counsellor who is self-employed as a means to keep selfdevelopment and personal growth as a “This book is a great guide on how to encourage reflection within your team and yourself.” priority. Transformational leadership versus transactional leadership is dissected and discussed; this gives a clear view in how different leadership styles encourage different working models, some of which are more successful in a caring profession than others. This book is a great guide on how to encourage reflection within your team and yourself, whether you are part of a large organisation or self-employed. Even though the bias is towards nursing, a large portion of this book is highly valuable in terms of models of reflection and how to integrate these into everyday practice. Copies of this publication are available at www.amazon.com. ASSIGNMENTS HINTS AND TIPS REFLECTIONS ON REFLECTIVE PRACTICE <strong>Reflective</strong> practice is a ‘buzz phrase’ that is used across a broad range of professions. Whether, for example in nursing, teaching, medicine, physiotherapy, social work, psychology or counselling, students and professionals are encouraged to reflect on their practice experience. With such a growing emphasis on reflection in professional practice across a range of disciplines I would like to spend a short amount of time now reflecting on what reflection actually is and how it may help a practicing professional counsellor. There are so many ways to learn, develop and grow in our understanding and experience as a counsellor. Strategies we are most used to include reading relevant literature, attending seminars and workshops, enrolling in courses of study and meeting regularly with a supervisor or group of colleagues. Interestingly, the process of reflection is another great way to develop our understanding and expertise as counsellors. While we can reflect on so many aspects of our life experience, when reflecting on our counselling practice the aim is to become mindful of the counselling process and everything that has just transpired in it to gain a better understanding of what has ‘worked’ and what has not. Often referred to as ‘reflecting on practice’ this particular approach to reflective practice could be defined as a process of validation that is used to enhance the development of our practice expertise. We validate the effectiveness of what we do through reflection by bringing into awareness those aspects of the counselling process most pertinent for one reason or another. What is pertinent could be at a micro level that involves, for example, subtle nuances of the therapeutic interaction or subtle response cues from the client, or at a macro level that reviews broader elements of the counselling process and clientcounsellor interaction. As we bring these pertinent aspects of the counselling process into our awareness and reflect on them, we are then able to 22
THE PROFESSIONAL COUNSELLOR 04 2008 review and critique what has just transpired with the client. Validating the quality of the counselling experience through reflecting on those things that are most pertinent is actually quite involved and complex even though we usually need to be in a relaxed and contemplative state for it to work. To clarify with an analogy, it’s a bit like a duck swimming where on the surface the duck is quite still and serene looking and yet under the water level their feet are flapping like a race horse galloping down the straight of a major race. In the same way, while we need to be in a relaxed and contemplative state to reflect well, we are actually activating our awareness of and conducting a critical review of the counselling process through a very complex information processing system that involves all of our senses and perceptual acumen, our short and long term memory of previous or similar experiences, our deeply held beliefs, values, attitudes and perspectives on the variables being reflected on that includes the client, their behaviour, their emotional responses and cognitions, our own emotional reactions and responses, our overt actions and interactions and our concluding schema of the experience overall. Bringing the most pertinent things to awareness from this complex process stated above is aided by a growing knowledge base of previous experience whereby, the more experience we gain in practice and the more we reflect on that practice experience, then the more capable we become in picking out those aspects of the experience that are most pertinent to reflect on and review. In this sense reflection and practice spin off each other in a positive way. So for reflection to work, we need to have experiences to reflect on and opportunity to reflect. Our own reflections can also be enhanced “Our own reflections can also be enhanced through pooling our knowledge base of previous experience with others through supervised reflection and group reflection.” through pooling our knowledge base of previous experience with others through supervised reflection and group reflection. Ultimately reflection is simply another valid way to develop our expertise as counsellors whereby instead of reading a relevant book or attending a seminar, we can reflect on our own experience in the counselling process to validate what is working for the client and what is not, what we should refine in the counselling process and how we should go about refining it. I will finish with a quote from a previous article I wrote in Australian Psychologist... “The ongoing process of reflecting on previous experiences helps the expert to establish ‘a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the phenomena encountered in one’s professional work….’ As the novice gains authentic experience in the context of real environmental settings they start to build on the depth and complexity of their schema through the process of reflection due to the increased number of cues and pathways they establish with the vast array of subtle variables that present. This encourages a growing depth of expert understanding within the individual through the way their knowledge becomes increasingly suited to the nuances of the professional situation, thus making their responses more relevant, precise, effective, effortless and intuitive over time” (Jones, 2008; p. 41). References • Jones, C. M. (2008). From novice to expert: Issues of concern in the training of psychologists. Australian Psychologist, 43(1), 38-54. • Skovholt, T. M., Ronnestad, M. H., & Jennings, L. (1997). Searching for expertise in counselling, psychotherapy and professional psychology. Educational Psychology Review, 9, 361-369. Dr. Clive Jones, AIPC Education Manager 23
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