Reflection
One of the main learning skills that I was able to develop was the ability to reflect. There were many assignments during our course that required us to reflect afterwards. The point of this skill is to help me learn from a practical experience and connect it with theory that I have learnt from university and thus allow myself to have a greater understanding of the things I have learnt.
An example of an assignment where we were required to reflect was for my Clinical Studies 2 subject which required us to select a patient case from our time at clinical placement. This patient that we chose had to be from a different cultural background from our own. In this assignment, we were required to keep patient confidentiality. I chose a young woman of a Muslim background and discussed potential issues, the main being cultural sensitivity. At the end of the assignment, we had to write a reflection on what we have learnt from the case and discuss any strategies that we would implement if we were faced with a similar case in the future. From writing this reflection, it has definitely allowed me to understand that these issues are common and that I have to be aware and respectful of a patient’s culture. It has also allowed me to be prepared for these situations by discussing potential strategies to be used in the future.
This is a link to an image for my marks for the reflection part of my assignment from the USYD Canvas website.
Self-Assesment
Self-assessment is another learning ability that I was able to improve on during my time at university. I was continuously assessing myself, learning through my mistakes. I strongly believe that this is an important skill to have, as we must have the ability to improve ourselves, especially when in the work force.
There are plenty of times throughout my clinical placements that I was required to assess myself. For example, during clinical placements we were required to gain competencies of different parts of the body. One view that I had a lot of difficulty with was the lateral Y shoulder view. In order to gain the shoulder competency, I continuously practiced this view, making notes of all the reasons that I did not achieve a perfect image. By understanding all the things that I did wrong, led me to be very confident in my ability to perform this view now and allowed to me achieve competency for the shoulder. This was true for every position that I found difficult to perform.
I have attached an image of my achievement of my shoulder competency.
Judgement
Another important learning skill that I have developed is the ability of judgement. This means that I am able to make my own decisions that are based on previous knowledge gained from situations that I have experienced. This is important because eventually when working as a full-time radiographer, I must be able to make a decision based on my judgement of what is the right thing to do. This will show my independence and deepen my understanding of what I am learning, while not constantly relying on seniors for questions.
An example of a time I have demonstrated judgement, is during my time as a casual radiographer at a private clinical practice. Here, there was a student that was on placement there and I would sometimes be required to teach and demonstrate to the student the things that I have learned. As a casual radiographer at this time, I was expected to make my own judgement when it came to deciding to perform further imaging or if repeated images needed to be done. As such, whenever the student had a question or I was demonstrating to the student a specific view, I would need to be able to explain to the student why I did something a certain way or if something specific was or was not needed based of what I have learned throughout my four clinical placements.