Identification and assessment of problems of professional competence.

Abstract

At a practicum site, an African American cisgender male supervisor is concerned about a White cisgender female trainee's abilities to stay abreast of clinical documentation, as her clinical chart notes are always quite delayed. Additionally, he has noticed that when they are in supervision together, she has a hard time looking directly at him and rarely shares self-assessment of her work. In his estimation, she appears to defer completely to his perspective, although when he views clinical training recordings, he rarely sees her implementing the recommendations that they have discussed. He is becoming more frustrated, as efforts to discuss this lack of follow-through only yield more acquiescent behavior during supervision meetings. He raises this issue in a supervision team meeting.What would you recommend that the supervisors advise? This vignette illustrates several challenging dilemmas encountered when identifying and assessing problems of professional competence (PPC). PPC are identified in many ways. A problem may be identified by a troubling one-time behavior by a trainee, or it might be a result of several behaviors that occur over time. Problems may be observed in informal situations (e.g., conversation between students in the hallway between classes) or may be found through formal