Professional Practice Blog 6

Professional Practice Blog 6

By Simon Marks



How does professional development, reflective practice & supervision act to support professional practice?

Professional development, reflective practice & supervision all act to support increased levels of professional practice in many ways. They do this by giving us the ability to be aware of areas in our practice that are lacking and developing our skills to better cope with them. I will go through some of the techniques and strategies that can be used, to make us more efficient in our practices by helping us to detect areas that are in need of development.

The main objective of going through reflective practices and working on our professional development is to give us the tools to provide a better service for our clients. This is done by teaching to be more aware of how we react in situations mentally, emotionally and physically and how we influence others through our practice. A good technique to use is the spiral model of reflective practice. It starts by practicing or going through your normal working procedures. You then select a area of trouble or area that is not running as smoothly as others, (the use of client feed back forms could be used to find a place to start). The next step is to describe the problem and how you have reacted to the situation it is best to write this down. You then need to reflect on what you have written and assess how you acted and think of other ways in which you could have better reacted. This can be done with the help of a supervisor, as they can give you different angles and perspectives on the situation you may not have thought of. To get ideas on how to best respond to the situation you need to research in to any gaps in your understanding of how to deal with the situation. Once you have a good understanding of this, you need to make a plan of how to change your bad habits to better cope with the problem in the future and apply them in your practice. The final step is to then monitor your progress to determine whether or not the plan is improving your over all service to your clients.

Reflective practice is a good way to improve the quality of your practice another way to maintain a good level of professional practice is to work on your professional development. One way to do this is by joining MNZ and participating in there professional development policy. This insures that you are keeping up with current procedures and always improving your skills, it also enables you to network with other therapists so you can bounce ideas off them. Another option is to do this off your own back by networking with other therapists and enrolling in courses, refreshers and seminars to keep up with changing techniques, research and trends.

To keep your professional development on track and give your practice focus allowing you to define yourself in the massage community. You need to consider where you see yourself in the future and what you want to contribute to the massage industry in the long run. If this isn’t done then your practice may become very broad and scattered. Where as it could be best to decide a certain area in the industry that suits your interests and focus in and specialise your skills around it, giving you an edge for that particular market.

I believe professional development, reflective practice & supervision influences your level of professional practice a lot. In order to maintain a good quality of practice they have to be constantly looked at. Especially in the massage industry as it is growing and advancing all the time. Although I don’t think it would suit me personally to join MNZ and participate in there professional development polity as I feel it’s a bit restricted in its choices and many of them I am not interested in doing. I think it is a good start and will help to increase the level of professional development in the industry. This is needed as many therapist already practicing don’t seem very motivated to raise there skill levels and training.