Clinical Tutors

Through out the year and through all of my previous placements I have not had a problem with anyone of my supervisors and so have never really had to deal with conflict of this sort. Whilst on my last placement I had several supervising physiotherapists which soon began to take it's toll as each of these physiotherapists had thier own preferred method of doing things and ranked the importance of certain tasks very differently. There was one particular physio who I just could not seem to see eye to eye with. I only had a chance to deal with each physio once a week and even though I would implement the changes in my sessions as she had requested but I was getting conflicting advice from other physios and I felt as though I could do no right in her eyes.

This eventually began to stress me out quite badly. My curtin supervisor came to assess me whilst I was with this physiotherapist and commented on the difference between this class that I took and the others that I had taken, she was worried because the class that I had taken was not up to the standard that I had set with other classes. I had not yet spoken to her about my 'conflicts' with the physio as I had only seen my curtin tutor on two occasions previously and did not feel that I could tell her of my problem. Luckily for me she picked up on it and her and I sat down and discussed strategies to manage this. It was just a matter of conflicting personalities, she also encouraged me to just back but the reasons why I was doing what I was doing as the phsyio would respect this more.

From this I realised the value of our curtin tutors, not only for promoting and developing our clinical knowledge but for a range of other problems that we might have. If anyonelse has any difficulties on their placements I really would recommend discussing this with your tutor. They are here to help us through to the end of our physiotherapy degree so just ask for help if you need it!!