50 min
Episode #74 - The Whys and The Hows of the Clinical Doing: A Conversation with Rochelle Cohen-Schneider Aphasia Access Conversations
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- Medicine
Dr. Katie Strong, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Central Michigan University, talks with Rochelle Cohen-Schneider from the Aphasia Institute about the importance of developing and attending to our clinical selves.
Rochelle Cohen-Schneider is the Director of Clinical and Educational Services at the Aphasia Institute in Toronto, Canada. She has worked in the field of aphasia (across the continuum of care) for most of her career spanning 38 years. She studied Speech and Hearing Therapy in South Africa and completed a master’s degree in Adult Education in Toronto. In addition to her interests in clinical education, continuing education and working within a social model of aphasia Rochelle is passionate about understanding ‘how clinicians think, and why they do what they do.'
In this episode you will:
Hear stories about clinicians connect the dots in the things you can’t see as a clinician but have a critical role in the work you do. Understand the difference between reflective and reflexive work, and why both are essential to developing our clinical selves. Learn a few tips and some resources to broaden and deepen your clinical lens. KS: Rochelle, welcome to this episode of the Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast. I'm so excited for you to be here today, and to have this conversation and for our listeners to really hear about your work and perspectives.
RCS: Thank you very much for this invitation, Katie, I'm really looking forward to digging into this topic with you. Thank you.
KS: Oh, me too. I'm just so excited. And as we get started, Rochelle, I'd love for our listeners to hear a bit about your story and how you became interested in this area of the ‘clinical self’. That's powerful, that's powerful Rochelle. I mean I Wow.
RCS: So, Katie, it became clear to me that the therapeutic encounter was a multi-dimensional endeavor requiring multiple skill sets, right from the days of being a student in, as you said earlier, in Johannesburg, South Africa. So, the physical structure of what was known as the Speech and Hearing Therapy Department housed both lecture halls, and small clinic rooms, where we, the student clinicians, carried out our therapy activities under the watchful eyes of our clinical tutors. These tutors watched from behind one-way mirrors and spent a lot of time debriefing with us about the session, our goals, the treatment methods, we chose, why we chose them, how we performed, and also how we enacted our clinical selves. In other words, how we related to our patients, where we sat, why we sat where we set, and we will often put through the paces to have us begin to understand how we positioned ourselves as clinicians. And it was really important in the clinical setting and how we learned to be, the relationship and relating to the clients was really, really important. And in fact, when we wrote our reports for our tutors, the first goal, regardless of age, or communication disorder, had to be establishing rapport. And actually, as the literature tells us rapport is actually only one small element within the clinical relationship. Maybe it's a gateway. It's a fairly static notion, because the relationship is much more dynamic, you know, interactive and an unscripted interaction. So because of the way this physical physically was set up, our academic and our clinical learning took place under the same roof, allowing for a very dynamic and stimulating learning environment, which focused both on rigorous academic growth and clinical development. So as a clinician stepping into the role of a clinician. And I think I might be able to say that this environment really helped us student clinicians “think with theory”, as Felicity Bright calls it. And we were trained to understand both the objective and subjective aspects of being a clinician and that fully engaging in a therapeutic encounter is really important. Another little aspect of this was i
Dr. Katie Strong, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Central Michigan University, talks with Rochelle Cohen-Schneider from the Aphasia Institute about the importance of developing and attending to our clinical selves.
Rochelle Cohen-Schneider is the Director of Clinical and Educational Services at the Aphasia Institute in Toronto, Canada. She has worked in the field of aphasia (across the continuum of care) for most of her career spanning 38 years. She studied Speech and Hearing Therapy in South Africa and completed a master’s degree in Adult Education in Toronto. In addition to her interests in clinical education, continuing education and working within a social model of aphasia Rochelle is passionate about understanding ‘how clinicians think, and why they do what they do.'
In this episode you will:
Hear stories about clinicians connect the dots in the things you can’t see as a clinician but have a critical role in the work you do. Understand the difference between reflective and reflexive work, and why both are essential to developing our clinical selves. Learn a few tips and some resources to broaden and deepen your clinical lens. KS: Rochelle, welcome to this episode of the Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast. I'm so excited for you to be here today, and to have this conversation and for our listeners to really hear about your work and perspectives.
RCS: Thank you very much for this invitation, Katie, I'm really looking forward to digging into this topic with you. Thank you.
KS: Oh, me too. I'm just so excited. And as we get started, Rochelle, I'd love for our listeners to hear a bit about your story and how you became interested in this area of the ‘clinical self’. That's powerful, that's powerful Rochelle. I mean I Wow.
RCS: So, Katie, it became clear to me that the therapeutic encounter was a multi-dimensional endeavor requiring multiple skill sets, right from the days of being a student in, as you said earlier, in Johannesburg, South Africa. So, the physical structure of what was known as the Speech and Hearing Therapy Department housed both lecture halls, and small clinic rooms, where we, the student clinicians, carried out our therapy activities under the watchful eyes of our clinical tutors. These tutors watched from behind one-way mirrors and spent a lot of time debriefing with us about the session, our goals, the treatment methods, we chose, why we chose them, how we performed, and also how we enacted our clinical selves. In other words, how we related to our patients, where we sat, why we sat where we set, and we will often put through the paces to have us begin to understand how we positioned ourselves as clinicians. And it was really important in the clinical setting and how we learned to be, the relationship and relating to the clients was really, really important. And in fact, when we wrote our reports for our tutors, the first goal, regardless of age, or communication disorder, had to be establishing rapport. And actually, as the literature tells us rapport is actually only one small element within the clinical relationship. Maybe it's a gateway. It's a fairly static notion, because the relationship is much more dynamic, you know, interactive and an unscripted interaction. So because of the way this physical physically was set up, our academic and our clinical learning took place under the same roof, allowing for a very dynamic and stimulating learning environment, which focused both on rigorous academic growth and clinical development. So as a clinician stepping into the role of a clinician. And I think I might be able to say that this environment really helped us student clinicians “think with theory”, as Felicity Bright calls it. And we were trained to understand both the objective and subjective aspects of being a clinician and that fully engaging in a therapeutic encounter is really important. Another little aspect of this was i
50 min