How do you provide constructive feedback to a supervisor who admits they have “confidence issues” and comments that “I don’t feel like I’m being a very good supervisor”? I took the easy route and blamed my lack of enjoyment of the prac on the “busyness of the ward” and “not feeling well”. Here’s my brief, edited version of the story:
Day one of prac, feeling very nervous as I was the only student on the ward at the time, but calmed by the fact that the previous student on prac here enjoyed their time.
Met my supervisor: “sorry the ward is just too busy to be able to do your orientation today, we’ll get to it later, for now just follow me”. Thus began two horror weeks for me. It was my first time in a ward environment (apart from a couple of half day placements) and I had no idea how they ran, where anything was, nurses and supervisors too busy to be able to help me out. With no clear objectives set or any time for tutes to be conducted, I coped as best as I could. Due to extenuating circumstances my supervisor gave me my mid placement feedback on the Monday of week 3 as they had to take the following two weeks off. The comments I felt were unfair, and harsh based on the lack of learning opportunities and supervision over the past two weeks. Too upset and emotional at this point to defend myself or clarify and understand the reasoning behind the comments, I left that afternoon with a huge blow to my confidence and that feeling you get occasionally “why am I studying physio…is this all really worth it….” The fact was I wasn’t learning anything here.
I met with my Curtin Clinical Tutor and Clinical Coordinator to discuss my concerns and strategies to cope, however the next two weeks were much easier and actually enjoyable.
I know that we don’t get along with everyone due to differences of personality, but what does a student do when they’re not coping with a situation brought about by their supervisor, who due to a heavy case load admitted was “at times unable to cope with their own case load”, let alone have time to supervise a student.
In the end, I got through it, although it is not an experience I enjoyed. The problem however I had was how to give feedback to my supervisor about better (or different) ways of supervising a student on the ward in future?
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Good work lisa, I should have done what you did in my prac-talking to amanda and the supervisor which should have made it much easier. I actually think that my supervisor was worse than yours because she was of no benefit to me at all in terms of learning since she was busy but she thinks that she is great. Scared of hurting her feeling, I therefore had to put up with her 'great teaching' for 5 weeks and not speak a thing-she gave me some negative feedback (emotional as well) in front of ward staff and she knocked off my confidence a lot by doing that. My other supervisor at other prac was ten times better than her. And I really learned heaps in the ward and increased lots of confidence which I had lacked.
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