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STUDENTS COACHING STUDENTS:
AN ODYSSEY IN OT AT MCMASTER UNIVERSITY
ABRIDGED VERSION – FOR FULL ARTICL
E CLICK HERESTUDENTS’ VOICES
Imposter syndrome. A phenomenon that has emerged
for many of us over the course of our occupational therapy
clinical education, but never quite so prominently as during
our first placement experiences. Each day, we are chal-
lenged to absorb tremendous amounts of new knowledge
with our ardent anticipation to get out there and… do
what? What does it mean to be a student occupational
therapist (SOT), exactly? What does it look like? Two stand-
alone pillars exist, one of thought and one of action, with-
out a bridge in sight. It is at this stage that our professional
identities are called into question and our perceived im-
poster syndrome can itself become a barrier to learning.
Exactly which topics do you explore with SOTs before
beginning their clinical education to prepare them for the
odyssey that is First Placement? With this in mind, we, the
McMaster Occupational Therapy Class of 2016, were in-
spired to develop an hour-long presentation and an accom-
panying pocket guide
What To Know When You’re On
Placement.
These provided a foundation to launch an in-
augural student-to-student discussion, incorporating prac-
tical tips related to making evaluation run smoothly,
strategies for handling conflict on placement, how and why
to maintain work-placement balance, and tips for commu-
nicating with your preceptor. For each topic, the desig-
nated presenter shared a personal anecdote from
placement – often this involved learning from a blunder –
as well as the nuggets of wisdom that we added to our
toolkit from these moments to be used pro re nata.
The
Let’s Lunch Together
event took place a fewweeks
preceding the start of placement for first-year students. Stu-
dents had been informed of their placement settings and
had logged some time researching their settings to under-
stand their practice area broadly. First year SOTs were in-
vited to a lunch with volunteers from our year. Students
were grouped into tables representing similar practice
areas: first years based on their upcoming placement, and
volunteers from our class assigned according to past place-
ment experiences. An upper year mentor introduced the
session, emphasizing both the conversational nature of the
event and the opportunity to ask those “burning ques-
tions”. By having a student-guided session, a distinction was
created between formal clinical preparation and the casual
mentorship intended for this event.
The
Let’s Lunch Together
session had unexpected pos-
itive consequences for our class. During our coaching, we
reflected on how much we had learned in one year. It
helped us understand our current level of knowledge and
determine our own learning gaps in preparation for our
final placements, building confidence in our developing
skills, and in our own capacity for self-directed learning. This
presented itself as yet another opportunity to engage in the
reflective process associated with clinical education at Mc-
Master, and helped us solidify our previous year of learning.
In short, we took another leap in our own journey towards
developing our professional identities, as we helped our
first-year peers take their first steps towards being practicing
student occupational therapists.
AN EDUCATOR’S VOICE
To say that I was impressed with the energetic and ev-
idence–informed approach of our second year SOTs in cre-
ating and delivering these sessions would be an
understatement. The students brought a very important
peer-to-peer relationship to their work with the first year
SOTs that enhanced learning and understanding about
what they could expect as students entering their first prac-
tica. It was very gratifying to see our senior students apply-
ing their competencies to facilitate the competency
development with the incoming class. This process had a
strong impact on senior students’ understanding of their
own growth in order to successfully engage their student
colleagues.
YEAR 1 & 2 COMPETENCY DEVELOPMENT:
A WIN-WIN OUTCOME
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