Continuing Education Requirements Are Unnecessary and Are Not Relevant to My Professional Competence

Author(s):  
Jeffrey E. Barnett ◽  
Jeffrey Zimmerman

Even the best trained and most highly skilled mental health clinicians must take active steps to maintain, update, and expand their knowledge and skills. Failure to do so on an ongoing basis places one’s professional competence at risk. This chapter explains the fragile nature of competence and the steps to take to help ensure the maintenance of ongoing clinical effectiveness. Enhancing one’s competence to add new skills and to expand one’s clinical practice into new areas also is addressed. Continuing requirements for license renewal are described and placed within the broader context of each mental health practitioner’s overarching ethical obligation to provide the highest quality professional services possible. Specific recommendations for achieving this goal are provided in the hope that mental health clinicians will incorporate them into their ongoing professional activities.

2021 ◽  
pp. 104973232110613
Author(s):  
Kristi Urry ◽  
Anna Chur-Hansen ◽  
Carole Khaw

Research seeking to understand and improve sexuality-related practice in mental health settings has paid little attention to the institutional context in which clinicians’ practice is embedded. Through a social constructionist lens, we used thematic analysis to examine how 22 Australian mental health clinicians implicated the wider institutional context when discussing and making sense of sexuality-related silence within their work. Interviews were part of a study exploring participants’ perceptions of sexuality and sexual health in their work more generally. Broader silences that shaped and reinforced participants’ perceptions and practice choices were situated in professional education; workplace cultures; and the tools, procedures and policies that directed clinical practice. We argue that sexuality-related silence in mental health settings is located in the institutional context in which clinicians learn and work, and discuss how orienting to this broader context will benefit research and interventions to improve sexuality-related practice across health settings.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey E. Barnett ◽  
Jeffrey Zimmerman

Mental health clinicians invest in many years of hard work to develop their clinical competence through graduate coursework and through supervised clinical experiences. All this is done with the ultimate goal of becoming independently licensed to practice in one’s profession. Because licensure is such an important event, signifying the culmination of so much education and training, it may be natural to believe that becoming licensed means that one is now clinically competent. This chapter addresses how clinical competence and licensure should be viewed and understood. Licensure assesses one’s competence to enter the profession, but it cannot guarantee competence in all areas of clinical practice at the time of licensure or in the future. How to maintain, update, and expand one’s competence over time is addressed. Risks and threats to competence are discussed, and recommendations are provided for ensuring one’s ongoing competence over time.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey E. Barnett

Providing effective clinical services to underserved communities brings with it a number of ethics challenges that, if not given sufficient attention, can result in potentially well-intentioned mental health clinicians causing harm and placing themselves at risk of professional sanctions. The need to possess sufficient clinical and multicultural competence relevant to the individual in question to be able to provide clinically effective treatments, addressing language differences, and appropriately utilizing interpreters are each discussed. Knowledge of local laws and regulations when providing clinical services in underserved communities is addressed. Additionally, the practice of tele-mental health and appropriately addressing fee issues for all types of professional services provided are discussed. The need to proactively address the potential for the development of vicarious traumatization and effectively practicing self-care on an ongoing basis are emphasized for all mental health clinicians who provide treatment services to the underserved.


Author(s):  
Ирина Дмитриевна Борченко ◽  
Ольга Борисовна Дударева

Введение. Представлены результаты ежегодного мониторинга входной и итоговой диагностики освоения слушателями дополнительных профессиональных программ. Цель – определение степени сформированности профессиональных компетентностей слушателей при освоении дополнительных профессиональных программ, а также определение динамики изменения субъектной позиции слушателей относительно их профессиональной компетентности. Материал и методы. Материалом исследования послужили полученные данные итоговой диагностики, разработанной институтом дополнительного профессионального образования. Представлены выявленные затруднения при прохождении обучения слушателями, а также интересная динамика по четырем разделам анкеты: позиция слушателей курсов относительно их правовой компетентности, психолого-педагогической компетентности, профессиональных умений, актуальности использования информационно-методических ресурсов института. Результаты и обсуждение. Анализ данных проводимой входной и итоговой диагностики уровня подготовки слушателей при освоении дополнительных профессиональных программ за 2019 г. позволил выявить типичные и оставшиеся затруднения, с которыми сталкиваются слушатели. В анкетировании приняли участие две категории: «Педагогические работники» и «Руководящие работники». Данные диагностики показали, что большинство слушателей испытывают потребность в развитии своей профессиональной компетентности. Актуальным в работе как педагогических, так и руководящих работников остается потребность в развитии умений, которые позволяют выстраивать собственную профессиональную деятельность в соответствии с законодательством в сфере образования. Важным является вопрос применения слушателями психолого-педагогических знаний и умений в профессиональной деятельности. Данные входной диагностики показывают достаточно небольшой процент слушателей, применяющих психолого-педагогические знания и умения, а также использование систематически и на естественной основе. Еще одной проблемой остается осознание недостаточного уровня владения информационно-коммуникационными технологиями. Несмотря на достаточную открытость информационных ресурсов института, представленность их на официальном сайте, довольно большой процент слушателей не в полной мере знаком с проектными и информационно-методическими ресурсами, так как, по мнению самих же слушателей, это не входит в круг их обязанностей. Заключение. Выявленные оставшиеся затруднения позволят отрегулировать работу проведения оперативной корректировки содержания и форм работы профессорско-преподавательского состава со слушателями в ходе освоения дополнительных профессиональных программ, а также определить подходы к принятию эффективных управленческих решений, направленных на обеспечение положительной динамики результатов освоения слушателями дополнительных профессиональных программ. Introduction. The results of the annual monitoring of the input and final diagnostics of the development of additional professional programs by students are presented. Aim and objectives. The goal is to determine the degree of formation of students’ professional competencies when mastering additional professional programs, as well as to determine the dynamics of changes in the subject position of students regarding their professional competence. Material and methods. The research material was the data obtained from the final diagnosis developed by the Institute of Continuing Professional Education. Identified difficulties in the training of students, as well as interesting dynamics in four sections of the questionnaire are presented: the position of students of the courses regarding their legal competence, psychological and pedagogical competence, professional skills, and the relevance of using the Institute’s information and methodological resources. Results and discussion. An analysis of the data of the conducted input and final diagnostics of the level of training of students in the development of additional professional programs for 2019 revealed the typical and remaining difficulties that students experience. Two categories took part in the survey: “Pedagogical workers” and “Leading workers”. Diagnostic data showed that most students feel the need to develop their professional competence. The need for the development of skills that allow you to build your own professional activities in accordance with the legislation in the field of education remains relevant in the work of both teachers and managers. An important issue is the use by students of psychological and pedagogical knowledge and skills in professional activities. Input diagnostic data show a fairly small percentage of students who use psychological and pedagogical knowledge and skills, as well as the use of a systematic and natural basis. Another problem remains the awareness of an insufficient level of knowledge of information and communication technologies. Despite the sufficient openness of the institute’s information resources and its presence on the official website, a fairly large percentage of students are not sufficiently familiar with project and information-methodological resources, including those presented on portals and sites located on the official website, since this is not in their circle duties, according to listeners. Conclusion. The remaining difficulties identified will allow us to adjust the work of carrying out operational adjustments to the content and forms of work of the teaching staff with students during the development of additional professional programs, as well as to determine approaches to making effective management decisions aimed at ensuring positive dynamics in the results of the development of additional professional programs by students.


The article is devoted to one of the most pressing challenges facing higher education today - the formation of professional competence of university students. The competitiveness of the labor market demands of today’s students meet modern requirements of economic development, and subsequently formed the competence ensure readiness of students for their professional activities. Therefore, the authors believe that the professional competence of students of technical colleges can begin to form in the first stage of training through the context of learning and interdisciplinary integration, since contextual training constructed professional skills of students to carry out engineering activities, including many aspects, and interdisciplinary communication, in turn, It combines their knowledge and skills from different disciplines, directs the final result - the professional competence. Formed quality will help future technicians holistically apply knowledge of different fields of science in their professional engineering and be competitive specialists in the conditions of modernization of modern enterprises.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Tzur Bitan ◽  
Ariella Grossman Giron ◽  
Gady Alon ◽  
Shlomo Mendlovic ◽  
Yuval Bloch ◽  
...  

2013 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherry Sullivan

Adult and continuing education practitioners must engage in continuing professional education as a means of developing and maintaining their professional competence. This paper reviews the literature on competencies for continuing educators and examines the strengths of existing instruments for continuing educators to self-assess their competencies. One of the challenges in this process has been a means to systematically and comprehensively assess existing knowledge and skills and to identify where competencies are not adequate. This paper describes an assessment instrument that addresses these challenges and builds on the strengths of existing tools. It describes the development of a tool through a consultative process that identified the range of practitioner competencies required of adult and continuing educators. The assessment tool incorporates a behaviorally based approach to assessing identified competencies. It is unique because it addresses many of the needs identified in the literature including well articulated criteria for making judgments about a person’s current knowledge and skills, a format that allows for clear identification of gaps in learning so that meaningful professional development can take place, the clear structure needed to develop a “portfolio” of skills, and a format that requires the provision of evidence to support claims of proficiency in the identified areas. Though the development of the tool was initiated through the development of Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition processes, it is anticipated that it will be useful for continuing educators to undertake self-assessments as a basis for hiring, career laddering, and planning their ongoing professional development activities and goals. In both cases it provides a framework for meaningful reflection, assessment, gap identification, and planning.


2000 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 83-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Geddes ◽  
Simon Wessely

It is impossible to avoid the plethora of clinical practice guidelines and other forms of practice policy and protocols that have been showered on psychiatrists and other mental health clinicians over the last decade. Several motivations lie behind this phenomenon – reducing the amount of unnecessary variation in clinical practice, improving clinician's access to research evidence and summarising available evidence to assist individual patient and clinician decision-making. With the arrival of the National Service Framework for Mental Health, it is timely to take stock of the evidence requirements for developing valid clinical standards.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey E. Barnett ◽  
Jeffrey Zimmerman

All mental health professionals are at risk for developing symptoms of burnout and other stress-related difficulties over time. The practice of mental health can be very challenging and demanding. Mental health clinicians bring with them their own histories of emotional vulnerabilities, and they experience challenges and difficulties in their personal lives. These factors can combine to place mental health clinicians at risk for experiencing problems with professional competence and judgment. This chapter explains these challenges and risks as well as the role ongoing self-care can play to prevent these difficulties. Self-care is explained, and examples are provided to illustrate the range of actions one may take to maintain ongoing wellness and competence. Risk factors and blind spots are highlighted, potential pitfalls to avoid are reviewed, and recommendations for addressing these proactively are provided.


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