Struggling with my supervisors on my first placement - very worried - please help!

[psychstudent9090]

Hi everyone,

This year I begun my combined PhD/Master of Psychology (Health) in Australia, and have recently begun my first placement (60/250 hours in). It is a health promotion placement working with clients with chronic illnesses in a gym and building rapport with them, hopefully eventually leading to the facilitation of psycho education groups. My supervisors have been giving me quite a bit of negative feedback, which I am happy to accept, but I am struggling a bit, and would appreciate some guidance from some more experienced students and psychologists. I am going to avoid giving as much identifying information as possible. Unfortunately, because my on-site supervisor is not an accredited supervisor yet, I also have an external supervisor, who has not visited me on-site, and I have to travel 90 minutes to see her once a week. Both my on-site supervisor and external supervisor are relatively new to supervision (less than 2 years experiences).

I thought everything was going okay until I received an email from my placement manager at uni (who is lovely) asking if I could come into uni early next week for a meeting regarding my placement. I brought this up at my next supervision meeting (over the phone) with my external supervisor, and asked if she knew what this may be about. She then told me that she and my on-site supervisor (who haven't met) had reported me. I asked why, and she said she would leave it up to the placement manager to tell me. I had an in-person meeting with her the next day, and asked her if it was normal protocol to go through a third party if you have a complaint about a student. She acted dumb, and said that she would be providing my manager with feedback anyway. As the session progressed, I said that I would appreciate if she raised her concerns with me before reporting me in the future. She said that she already had raised her concerns, but in my opinion she hadn't. Her main concerns were:

1. I am too passive in the supervision process and on placement. I need to bring my logs in more frequently, and address my competencies more forthrightly. They are not responsible for my learning or my activities on placement, and it is my responsibility to come with ideas on how to meet my competencies (e.g., there is an assessment competency, an intervention competency) and report those ideas back to them. I guess I didn't realise this, because no one told me, and I thought they would help me, or at least tell me.

2. They think I am overwhelmed with the demands of placement. I was assigned my 'organisational project' last week, and verbally expressed concern over how I would fit it in. I was just being frank and honest, because in this placement I am traveling between multiple sites, and time I may spend in the office working on the project, I am in the car. My external supervisor found this out from my on-site supervisor and said she was confused when I subsequently said that I had a handle on my organisational project on the phone. I personally do not feel overwhelmed and said that alternatively I am just concerned by the practicalities. They insisted that I am overwhelmed.

I met with my on-site supervisor today, and she confirmed all these things. There are however, a few discrepancies between what she and my external supervisor think. I have been told that while I am building rapport and working well with the clients, I am not interacting with the exercise physiologists enough and gathering information from them. Without this information, she will not let me facilitate psycho education sessions and will fail me. My external supervisor wants me to begin facilitating psycho education sessions immediately. I have not been interacting as much as I would like with the EPs because when in the car, they have the music up so loud I can't hear what they are saying, and I was told to work from home as there is no desk space in the office.

Alternatively, my external supervisor wants me to use my time in the car (I don't drive the company cars) to read and work on my organisational project. She also said I should be working at the office, as it is an OH&S risk for me to work from home on placement activities (found this odd - ironically there are rats at the office - more of a risk in my opinion). My on-site supervisor has subsequently changed her stance, and said it was me that chose to work from home, but I thought I was meant to work from home because she originally told me that there wasn't much desk space and I'd be best to work from home. My external supervisor also wants me to record me facilitating a psycho education session, but my on-site supervisor is not keen.

I have had success on my undergraduate placement at a hospital, working as a research assistant at a university, working with research supervisors during my honours year, and subsequently publishing an article with them.

I'm really confused by all of this, and I am starting to think that I am the problem. What do you think? What should I do? I just really want to get the most out of this placement and of course pass it.

Many thanks in advance for your time.

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[psychstudent9090]

Please help!

 

[smalltownpsych]

Some of what you are describing sounds eerily familiar to what I experienced with one supervisor. Especially the part about being open with thoughts and fears and having that become their reality and used against you.

My advice is to just keep doing the best you can, focus on the work, and get through it. Demonstrate that you are taking in the negative feedback and addressing it even if you feel it is not based on reality. My supervisor instituted a remediation plan to "remediate" one of my areas of greatest strength. I didn't argue because how do you argue when someone says the sky is not blue? I just did the plan and got through it.

 

[DrMikeP]

How have other students done at the particular site? If well or at least avg, you might be the problem, which isn't a huge deal in that you've gotten feedback hopefully early so do something about it.

Either way fault doesn't matter if there's little you can do to make a placement or supervisor change, so use feedback to help you grow as a clinician, ask questions seek out opportunities to learn.

Good luck

 

[PsyDGurl]

Sounds to me like it might be helpful to get both your supervisors in the same room for a meeting to create a very specific plan on how you can address their concerns (this is not at all to say that you are not effective at your current position). But essentially nothing matters except their perception of how you're doing and it sounds like there's a lot of confusion muddying the waters. If it were me, I would put the plan in writing with as much specifics as possible. That way if things continue to be difficult, you can show very measurably how you've tried to address their concerns and do exactly what's been outlined in the plan.

Supervision issues are delicate and take some finesse. I think that 60 hours is a relatively short period so it takes some time for everyone (you and your supervisors) to get into a groove. Don't lose hope, just continue to put forth the best effort you can. Best of luck!

 

[MCParent]

As with most of these posts, I'm sure the problem is at least in part with the OP. e.g., OP, you critique them as "relatively new to supervision (less than 2 years experiences)" while you yourself are only 60 hours into your first ever placement. You attribute every failure in communication to the SV not understanding you, and assume that your success in another placement means that you are doing fine here and the other SV is at fault.

To the extent that there are problems that are due to the SV, get procedural and evaluative stuff in writing. If other people have done the placement before, ask what they did.

It's also a possibility, none of us knowing the actual situation, that sure, maybe the SV is a little nuts. Sometimes you have to deal with SVs who are nuts.

 

[CheetahGirl]

I agree with others. Use this experience to investigate where you may truly be falling short of what other supervisees have done in the past, but also (now that you have feedback), try your best to clearly understand what you need to do, going forward (i.e., get both supervisors in one space together - maybe on a conference call; and get things in writing - or you write out an email to both of supervisors and copy your university advisor, and have them confirm your understanding of what needs to be done via their replies). For example, "I understand you need me to start my psychoeducation group on [date]; 1) I will be recruiting patients from XXXX, with XXX assistance; 2) there should be XX patients per group; 2) I will establish group rules and topics in advance of each group with XXX supervisor; 3) notes need to be written within 24 [?] hours; 4) supervision will be within XX days of each group; etc.; 5) I will be evaluate on [X, Y, Z]." BE CONCRETE. Otherwise, everything is an assumption. I would take copious notes in supervision (because it is my style, but also because I wanted to make sure I was very clear about what I was doing). I would not be able to do supervision while driving. For me, it would compromise my ability to focus on the task at hand (which in this case, the task at hand is the patient work...not the drive home).

One of my first lessons when I moved to NYC, from a Southern US state, was trying to negotiate leniency due to travel time (I had to travel about an hour & half by train...one way for my first job). The administrator for medical department I was working for looked at me very calmly and said: "It is not our problem how far you have to travel to do your job. You have to decide if you want to do this job or not. And if you do, can you commit to being reliable?" So, while it is harsh to hear something like that for the first time, he was completely correct.

One major part of graduate training (especially during training) is time management, so figure out where you can make the best use of your time and (as my husband often, and not politely tells me) suck it up, and do what you need to do. The placement will not be forever but you will be a better person for it, after it is over.

Good luck!

 

[Sendtrees]

The length and style of this OP sounded familiar, so I looked back at earlier posts and was not surprised to find several others just like this one--people are not being fair! etc.