Full Spectrum Reflective Practice
When we work with clients and patients, any reflective practice we do is often focused on the client work alone. While this is of course central, it is only one aspect of the ecosystem. In order to create a sustainable practice , we need to tend to all aspects to ensure best practice and outcomes for clients, practitioner wellbeing and professional progression.
Full -Spectrum Reflective Practice take a wholistic approach to practitioner care and tend to all aspects that impact our wellbeing, we have created a practice that tends to the practitioners, their clients, their practice as a whole and the dynamic relationship between these 3 pillars. Without attention to all areas, we miss the opportunity for true reflection on what impacts up personally and professionally with our work and create blind spots and energy blocks that inhibit our pathway.
In order to create a sustainable practice, we need to ensure that our own needs are met as well as our clients. When we work with people and get busy in the work. Many trainings focus on the clinical work but offer little on the essential requirement for self-care as practitioners nor the of the business aspect of the work, for those who chose to follow a path of private practice and self-employment, which many do. Without regular, structured space to reflective on, consider and engage all of these areas, we become trapped working in the work with not space to reflect on the work, ourselves and our trajectory.
MYSELF - As practitioners working with clients, be it therapeutically, holistically or through any of the allied health professions, I do believe that the most powerful resources we bring to our work is ourselves. All the skills, trainings, tools we have acquired are nothing without a resourced and resilience practitioner. The reality of life is that most practitioners have their own challenges in life going on from time to time. The key is that practitioners are giving time and space to themselves to consider their own needs and vulnerabilities. From this reflection, an awareness of any supports that they need for themselves or to minimise impact on their client work can be considered. This is the foundational piece for practitioner-care and must be a regular practice.
MY CLIENTS - Our clients, their presenting issues, challenges , needs. Our interventions, our way of understanding, our blocks, our triggers. The practitioner-client relationship lies at the centre of all of our practice. What our clients bring, what they want, what they need and our responses to these things. All of the above creates the realm of our work as practitioners. I do believe that each and every client is individual and unique and there is no one size fits all. It is our responsibly as practitioners to remember this, even as we become more experienced and practiced in our work seeing the same presenting issues again and again. I believe we treat people not their symptoms and with that we must remember to give time to reflect on our clients as whole people in their environment and not just a set of symptoms.
MY PRACTICE / BUSINESS - The work of a practitioner does not happen in isolation. If working within an organisation there is the environment, the culture, the professional pathways and the human dynamics to negotiate. If working in private practice, there are the core elements of running a business that need to be tended to. These are areas that are often. afterthought however are linked to the most fundamental of basic needs survival and purpose. Unless we are working consciously to ensure that our business are profitable, we can find ourselves in very insecure situations. If we are not creating a space to explore our professional progression pathways and sense of purpose within our roles and organisations, we can drift and becomes stagnant, finding ourselves demotivated and at worst, heading for burnout.
Creating a structure where we can build in regular, reflective spaces to consider the full spectrum of our professional landscapes is fundamental to creating sustainable practice, resourced practitioners and best practice outcomes for client.
