Healthcare Education: Healthcare Supervisors Need Help to Manage Difficult Student Issues

EAST GREENWICH, R.I., June 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The national healthcare management consulting firm of Kubica LaForest Consulting recently held a workshop to help healthcare educators including preceptors, fieldwork educators and supervisors implement better supervising approaches for students in the healthcare disciplines.

"Healthcare educators face many challenges. There is increasing demand on their time to balance clinical work and student supervision," says Tony Kubica and Sara LaForest, partners at Kubica LaForest Consulting, which specializes in working with healthcare management and educators.

In a recent workshop for a consortium membership of Occupational Therapy Field Work Educators and Supervisors, 150 attendees listed challenging situations they face. The most common issues in healthcare education are:

• Disinterested and unengaged students
• Students who have entitlement attitudes                        
• Helping students who are underperforming due to outside demands such as parenting and economic challenges
• Placement of students with disabilities in delicate clinical placement settings
• Knowing when the pattern of underperformance should result in a termination from the program

The healthcare education seminar helped healthcare educators and supervisors answer such questions as:

• How do I motivate a healthcare student who is unengaged?
• How do I build influence to guide dialogue with students during difficult situations?
• What are constructive interpersonal techniques to circumvent defensiveness, escalation and avoidance?
• How do I build self-awareness, self-monitoring and regulation to improve my own behavior and reactions during interventions with students?
• What approaches can I use to enhance student training?

"The interesting part starts when preceptors, educators and supervisors look within themselves. Intrapersonal skills (self-awareness and regulation) are as important for teachers as for students," said LaForest. "We also found that Interpersonal skills (relational, social, communication-based) are missing in the curriculum." 

To learn more about integrating intrapersonal and interpersonal skill building into your instruction and supervision models, contact Tony Kubica and Sara LaForest at [email protected].

About Kubica LaForest Consulting

Tony Kubica and Sara LaForest, Partners of Kubica LaForest Consulting, are management consultants, executive/performance coaches, speakers and authors. Together they offer over 60 years of combined experience in helping entrepreneurs, executives and senior managers of global companies and national organizations improve their performance and accelerate their growth. They have been clinical healthcare practitioners at the staff, supervisory and director level, and they have been clinical preceptors.

They are widely published internationally and train and speak at conferences and events across the country. As featured authors, their work has been published in Healthcare Executive, Business Week, Fast Company, CEO Refresher, LeaderValues, Duct Tape Marketing, Providence Business News, Women Entrepreneur, CNN Living, MicroSoft Dynamics and many others.

SOURCE Kubica LaForest Consulting