Dan

Much can be learned from getting feedback on your practice from others. This includes feedback from clients, colleagues, managers and other professionals.

Asking for feedback from others is something is often avoided in workplace environments, but it shouldn’t as it can be invaluable. If I were doing something incorrectly, I would want this to be pointed out to me. Some individuals may feel uncomfortable giving feedback, especially if it has negative overtones, so it is important to reassure them that any constructive criticism that can help improve you practice would be welcomed and not taken personally.

You may have been told by your manager that you seem to make a lot of mistakes on the balance checks. This gives you the opportunity to work with your manager to find out where you are going wrong and why and work to correct it – it may just be as simple as feeling rushed, in which case your manager should ensure you have sufficient time to do it going forward.

Or it could be that you are having difficulty motivating a client, so a colleague explains to you that this particular client responds better to staff that have a bit of banter with him. During your next shift with him, you use banter to motivate him and you have none of the previous difficulties.

Example Answer

During my first weeks working with a new client, he got upset for no apparent reason and went to his bedroom and slammed the door. He came back down a few minutes later with his hood pulled over his head and would not talk to me. I asked what was wrong and tried to converse with him for over an hour but he just ignored me.

A little later on, one of my colleagues explained to me that this particular client behaved in this way to gain attention and the best thing to do was to ignore him until he had calmed down. I put this into practice the next time he did this and within ten minutes, and after realising I wasn’t giving him any attention, his hood came down and he apologised and started chatting to me.

Reflecting on situations that you have encountered in your role as a health and social care worker is a great way to maximise your experience and improve your practice.

NOTE: Further information on reflective practice can be found here.

You will need to explain a situation you have been in and how you reflected on it later either by yourself or as part of a group. You will want to highlight anything that didn’t go quite as well as expected and why and what you could do in a similar future situation to make it run more smoothly. If you have had a similar situation and handled it differently due to the insights you gained from your reflection, even better.

Maybe you’ve been in a predicament where a client has not wanted to take their medication and the more that you have persisted and nagged, the more they have stubbornly refused. Upon reflection, you may have concluded that it would have been better if you had been more laid-back and simply said to the client to come and find you when they’re ready to take their meds.

Or perhaps there’s been a situation where you’ve accused someone of something that they were later found to be innocent of. By virtue of self-reflection you may have learned to point the finger in future without substantial evidence.

Example Answer

Last Christmas, a client who gets very excited around this time of year was due to go home to stay with his parents from Xmas eve to Boxing Day. Unfortunately, he wanted to come home after dinner on Xmas Day, which staff facilitated (as we had a contingency rota in place).

He wouldn’t tell us why he wanted to come back as he has a great relationship with his family, Having reflected on the situation, I remembered that he had presents in his house that he was saving to unwrap when he came home. Because he gets very excitable about unwrapping presents, I realised that that was the reason he had wanted to return. The next year, we ensured that he had taken all his Xmas presents with him.

It is important for a health and social care worker to proactively and continuously learn and develop and one of the ways that knowledge, skills and understanding can be improved is by partaking in learning activities.

Learning Activities

Learning activities cover a broad range of actions including:

• Formal training, either in-house with your organisation or provided by an outside agency.
• Meetings with colleagues and other professionals. Sharing ideas and experiences can be very useful.
• Self-study and own research.
• Meetings with manager, such as supervision, appraisal etc.
• Reflective practice or thinking about work you have done and how you may do it better in future.
• Own practice. The experience of completing tasks in own role gives you the opportunity to learn how best to do the work.

Improving Knowledge, Skills & Understanding

Thinking back to some of the learning activities that you have undertaken in the past, you should be able to identify some examples of how they have helped you in your professional development. You should also be able to evidence this in your day-to-day practice.

You may think back to when you first started working in the care industry and worked towards your Care Certificate and explain that you were unaware of your rights as an employee until you did this.

Or you may discuss a first-aid course you were on that taught you how to perform CPR – if you can provide an example of using CPR to save a life, even better!

Or maybe you could describe a time when you examined the incident record of an individual with challenging behaviour and identified a particular trigger that no-one else had noticed.

Example Answer

Shortly after joining my company, I completed an online course on Common Induction Standards, which included topics on medication, first aid, health & safety and food hygiene. I felt I learned a lot from these courses, particularly about food hygiene as I was unaware of many of the best practices. Examples included letting food cool down before putting it in the fridge and keeping raw meat separate from other foodstuffs. Now that I am much more knowledgeable in this area, I have benefited both professionally and personally.