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Professional Practice Approach to Fieldwork

Employers are currently looking for graduates who are able to quickly become productive in their companies or organizations. With increased demand for productivity, work integrated learning (WIL) is recognized as making a substantial contribution to the shift of students to the workplace awkward. Universities and colleges are seeking to institute as well as maintain collaborative partnerships and relationships with industry, government, and community organizations to prepare and equip the workplace of the future. WIL is defined as a pedagogical practice in which learners come to learn or acquire skills from integration of experiences within workplace and educational settings this is a grave mistake. This source is a recommended reading and obviously the professors knows it too well. That aside, this book does NOT AT ALL talk about WIL. Do you guess your citations? Such could cause serious problems both for the company and the client. Please endeavor to be authentic as far as possible. The source is about organizational structure and culture. See: http://www.ekof.bg.ac.rs/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/263.pdf  (Janicijevic, 2013). Integrating workplace experiences with curricular learning offers students with opportunities to contribute to practice as well as theory in an actual world work setting, deepening learners’ understanding and knowledge, along with enhancing work-associated capabilities (Jones & May, 1992). Jackson (2015) adds that WIL is widely employed by tertiary institutions to better and enhance graduate skills, employability, and attributes. WIL experiences, according to Martins and Terblanche (2003), are identified under several guises (practicums, internships, and work placements) globally. Essentially, WIL entails educational undertakings that function to amalgamate academic learning of a particular discipline with the discipline’s practical application within the workplace. The aim of WIL is to make sure that learners develop the capability to incorporate their individual learning via an amalgamation of work-associated and academic activities. Learning undertakings are particularly designed that need learners awkward to incorporate as well as aptly apply former knowledge and learning to make as well as justify decisions within a work-associated setting. Similarly, learners are taught and motivated to reflect on their individual actions and decisions within those work-associated undertakings to critically assess themselves. This paper is a reflection about my (first person forbidden in the audio if you listened to it) placement in the Emergency Services Department of the Australian Red Cross organization. The paper argues that to make a WIL program effective, there is a need for good partnership/association between all WIL stakeholders, including community organizations and local businesses (what does this even mean. WIL as you so well said, is simply the internship program, where students in universities/colleges get a chance to apply whatever they learnt in theory in classroom/lecture room setting in authentic/real wok environments to enhance skill acquisition, develop professional identity and transfer knowledge acquired in class to real work environment. There should be partnership between learning institutions and organizations for student to learn in the ‘field’ in the organizations. So when you say all stakeholders of WIL including…… you are not being clear. You instead bring unnecessary questions like which stakeholders are these? Etc.). The paper discusses that awkward effective partnership or relationships are necessary for effective WIL since they provide valued and crucial learning opportunities for students to advance the concept that work ‘preparedness’ and that effective WIL activities meet the needs of students, universities, and industry in developing, reflecting, and delivering on learning experiences that advantage stakeholders. For this paper, thesis development is crucial. If you can come up with a finer and clearer thesis it would be good.

My placement was in the Emergency Services Department (ESD) of the Australian Red Cross (ARC). ARC is an Australian leading humanitarian aid and community services charity as well as auxiliary to the Australian government. Formerly operating as a branch to the British Red Cross organization, ARC was established in 1914. The organization operates to provide assistance to people injured, wounded, the sick, and maimed, among other groups of causalities of accidents, catastrophes, and disasters. Additionally, the organization functions to make and empower vulnerable individuals by promoting humanitarian laws and values and delivering services (Abeysekera, 2006). In this organization, the ESD serves to better the lives of people involved in catastrophes and disasters that require emergency services. As such, the department’s customers are people from wars, people affected due to failure to adhere international humanitarian laws, the wounded, the sick, the maimed, and ex-service persons. The department treats health challenges and issues ranging from accident and fire victims to heart attacks. Owing to the unplanned nature of patient care attendance, the ESD provides initial treatment for a wide range of injuries and illnesses, some of which are life-threatening and require immediate focus and attention. In some cases, the department operates for 24 hours, though care providers work on shifts. Other issues that are handled at the ESD include cardiac arrest, trauma, asthma, and mental illnesses.

Generally, ARC’s ESD operates as a humanitarian aid. Humanitarian aid suggests a commitment by the organization to support vulnerable individuals or people who have undergone some unexpected and/abrupt emergencies or crises, therefore, needing continuous assistance and aid with the sole objective of bettering and sustaining the quality of their lives. Operating as a humanitarian department, ESD provides necessary skills as well as knowledge along with first aid services and/or training to its stakeholders as a way of supporting and empowering communities and individuals during times and periods of vulnerability (Bandaranaike & Willison, 2011; Blume et al., 2010). Similarly, the ESD purposes to reduce suffering both in and out of Australia through mobilization of humanity power since the department concentrates upon saving lives as well as supporting individuals during, before, and after distracters strike (Aggett & Busby, 2011). The department equally functions to alleviate suffering both during and after wars and conflicts in addition to promoting laws regarding war. Further, as a humanitarian aid department, ARC’s ESD, along with Australian policymakers, organizations, the public and politicians, work to enhance and better the condition in which vulnerable people within and without Australia.

The experience in the department during the placement period was a mixed one. On the one hand, the WIL was very tedious demanding, and involving, sometimes not even allowing care providers to have breaks for meals. Handling people requiring emergency treatment is considerably challenging. In some cases, optimal services could not be provided to the department’s clients and beneficiaries since special training, facilities, and equipment were needed. ESD requires various equipment and facilities along with different approaches/strategies relative to other care facility departments (Jones & May, 1992) did you really look at the contents of these recommended sources????. Patients, clients, and beneficiaries often arrived at the department with unstable conditions this sentence is not too logical; when you say patients, clients and beneficiaries came with unstable condition/ when you say beneficiaries, what do you mean? Isn’t Red Cross a humanitarian organization providing assistance to vulnerable communities and individuals affected by various catastrophes? Casualties, etc. it seems awkward that your sentence and so they required quick treatment and handling. In some cases, some of them were unconscious and data regarding their medical history, blood type, and allergies were in most cases unavailable. In such cases, challenges were unavoidable: effective and quick treatment could not be provided to the patients owing to the minimal information did you really research on the role of emergency service department of Australian red cross? I don’t know why it sound like a typical hospital ED/Emergency Department. While there was an assigned mentor who would guide through the process of providing emergency services, it could sometimes become very challenging to master the processes since whenever a patient was brought in who required emergency treatment, there was very little to learn since the goal was to see the patient attended to within the shortest time possible (Janicijevic, 2013; Scott, 2010) we do not cite such information. You are stating what you experienced/saw. Clearly this was not in the book, was it? Mean you randomly cite or ignore rules of citation. In addition, the recommended source Janicijevic has been mis-cited. Its contents is about organizational culture and structure. Please bother to check your source. Clearly, the minimal information regarding a patient jeopardized the quality of treatment that was provided to the patient, thus calling for effective partnership between care stakeholders.  

Despite the minimal information that could sometimes be available regarding a patient admitted within the ESD, the ESD staff effectively interacted with pre-hospital care providers like paramedics, emergency medical technicians (EMTs), ambulance technicians, and others who are often based within ESD so that they could provide an effective treatment and handling to patients. According to Abeysekera (2006), pre-hospital care providers may make use of equipment that are unfamiliar to a physician, yet ESD care providers should be expert in employing (as well as safely removing) specialized paraphernalia. This supports the idea that for effective treatment of patients, there is a need for an effective partnership between care stakeholders, in this case the pre-hospital care providers, the sick, and ESD physicians. The challenge during the WIL when dealing with emergency cases was that there were come equipment that were lacking. This hindered provision of certain level of care to patients. Additionally, there were few staff within the department, necessitating that the available staff operated as a unit and team whenever a patient was admitted. This would sometimes result in some care providers being fatigued. That notwithstanding, to enhance service provision to the ARC’s ESD clients, joint training as well as practice drills were organized to better communication and coordination of complex response systems.

On the other hand, the experience was informative, educative, and beneficial in as a far as acquisition of skills and knowledge is concerned. The WIL enabled working within a setting which allowed putting into practice that which was gathered in class and allowed for the development of an awareness of work setting culture as well as expectations. Importantly, through the WIL, it was pronounced and evidenced severally that for effective emergency care provision, there is need for effective communication. As aforementioned, there are some patients who were admitted in the ESD with little information regarding their medical past record and other details which cumulatively hampered the quality of care that they were provided. To enhance the quality of services provided, for example, to patients who were admitted with minimal information, the ESD physicians consulted with the ARC’s pre-hospital care providers and other pre-hospital care providers to ensure that any information that may have been collected before such a patient were admitted were obtained and used in further treatment of the patient. While providing care to patients admitted at the ESD, communication was still very integral: a physician who is an expert in a given line of treatment would provide their expertise, and cumulatively, such expertise would help enhance the care quality offered to patients and patients’ care outcomes (Jackson, 2015; Bourner & Millican, 2011) you are citing what you saw/experienced. Citation is for information obtained from source/literature. Alongside these, leadership, communication, time consciousness, teamwork and report and email writing skills were equally acquired. At no time when a patient was admitted (were you in a hospital emergency department or Red Cross emergency service department? You ought to have really researched what Red Cross does, particularly the role of the emergency service department. For some reason, one get a feeling as if you were a paramedic in a hospital emergency department, which would be a far cry from a humanitarian organization (Red Cross) emergency service department. Does it look the same to you?) was s/he attended to by one care provider. Instead, a team of people swung to action, providing possible suggestions on how a patient could effectively be attended to. Various tests were carried out. Different care specialists were involved, hence the team significantly role played in offering quality care to patients. While teamwork was that instrumental, there was always a team leader who would give direction and help in making decisions regarding the most possible and appropriate way a patient could be handled. The leaders were physicians from the ESD’s various sub-departments, who exhibited different leadership styles. To meet the needs of all emergency issues, time was a critical factor. Time consciousness was seriously upheld since time was considered to be equal to life: the quicker quality care was provided to patients, the quicker and more life was saved. After information had been collected regarding any particular patient, the same were properly regarded and a report would be written. Having served under a mentor, writing of reports regarding patients would be assigned, which practice resulted in enhanced report and email writing skills. As such, the WIL enhanced career development. However, due to the many engagements that the mentor had, very little feedback was given, making it difficult to determine how well emergency services were mastered. This contributed a level of incompetence and lack of confidence in daily practice within the ESD. Can you be critical? Relating this to theory/literature. Look for literature which emphasizes feedback importance in WIL, and then be critical, relating it to your experience. E.g. Author (2019) emphasizes constant feedback as essential in emergency communication, however, dung my WIL, this aspect seemed lacking since there was very minimal communication…. Adopt such a manner, relating what was learned in the lecture/literature, to your experience in the field. Additionally, the mentor was an ineffective communicator who could stay for several hours before communicating what needed to be done. Believing that his juniors were well trained from school and were able to carry out emergency services, he assumed that all physicians within ARC’s ESD needed no constant communication on what should be done at every single stage. Due to this limited information and communication, there was weak relationship between the mentor and myself, hence much dependence was founded upon knowledge and skills shared by colleagues within the facility. To better communication, the mentor shared vital notes every evening and created opportunities for practical exercise. This way, the above skills were acquired while other like report writing were bettered.

While it is evident that the WIL during the placement was effective, there are several best practices that ought to be considered for better knowledge and skill development during WIL. Blume et al. (2010) reason that WIL’s ethos are founded upon the concept of experimental and active learning where students transition from listening and visualising to attempting to doing what they are being told or taught. One of WIL’s conceptualisation supports Martins and Terblanche’s (2003) model regarding situated learning wherein learning is boosted and bettered when one participates in a community or organizational practice, as opposed to in isolation from the same. For this reason, the mentor and the ESD should provide sufficient access by students to their supervisors, learning supports, and preparation/induction processes (Bandaranaike & Willison, 2011) and vividly articulate as well as establish their anticipations of students and graduates (Aggett & Busby, 2011). On the other hand, students ought to ensure that WIL design and structure incorporate authentic learning undertakings that kept in agreement with learning aims with suitable learning support systems (Coll et al., 2016), the effective management of resourcing problems (Gray, 2017) and effective evaluation of intended results (Pegg et al., 2012). Additionally, the ARC’s ESD should have properly integrated their curriculum so that learning within the workplace is well integrated with learnings, skills, and knowledge that students gather in learning institutions since this would help students to make connections between their learning within various contexts as well as to better comprehend what is required for efficient and effective practice of targeted knowledge and skills. In such settings, learners have an opportunity to critically and comprehensively evaluate learning notions; practice and carry out certain procedures/behaviours, reflect on these applications as well as comprehend how procedures amalgamate to address intricate challenges and problems as well as shape workplace practices. 

During the WIL, writing was largely done during report and email writing. However, there were little opportunities for reflection. According to Bourner and Millican (2011), reflection is regarded as one of the most fundamental and implicit ways of fostering integration and ought to be employed after and before practice/work-based undertakings. To enhance integration within ESD WIL, there is need for reflection tools like portfolios, journals, and learning circles, and critical incident assessment (Yorke, 2017). Whereas the introduction of such tools may not warrant critical reflection by learners, they can at least motivate/inspire them to recognise weaknesses, future learning requirements, and weaknesses. What is more, for ARC’s ESD’s WIL to be regarded synonymous with on-campus learning, evaluations and assessments must be graded finely. During the placement, WIL did not involve comprehensive assessments. The only form of assessment was whether assignments that were given were done within the pre-set times. However, as Coll et al. (2016) state, assessments and evaluations during WIL ought to vividly define precise nature of knowledge and skill, or conducts/behaviours, alongside the anticipated degree of performance for students at various phases of their individual degree studies. That notwithstanding, ESD should take into consideration the fact that there are several challenges that are associated with operative WIL experience: challenges in locating cessation and placement of ongoing arrangements (Scott, 2010); inadequate design and environment for efficient and effective learning during work placements (Gray, 2017); as well as learners not attaining required standards of performance that are expected by their hosts (O’Brien, 2016). From the description of the experience during WIL, there is evidence of poor and ineffective communication between the supervisors and their students. To better this situation, Abiew (2012) suggests that students ought to be provided with more information regarding the background, purpose, as well as the anticipated results of every single undertaking during emergency or other care services; this will enhance students’ confidence in their real life/world practice. Moreover, more briefing sessions should be organized for students at the beginning of their placements since this will help them to adequately be prepared for their placements, and to assist them to make the best and most of learning opportunities.

From ESD’s WIL experience and best WIL practices, ESD should have done something differently ????????. Right at the time of students’ arrival at the department for their placement practices, there should be a thorough and all-encompassing induction process since this would make students feel more quickly settled and well-prepared to gain something from ESD workplace. Similarly, ESD should ensure that communication is made effective and elaborate both horizontally and vertically within it. The department’s leadership should ensure that supervisors engage their students on when and how they prefer to communicate with them amidst the supervisors’ busy schedules to ensure that students are well informed of what they should do at any single time (Pegg et al., 2012). The supervisors should also be encouraged to challenge their students to stretch their individual potentials by offering a wide range of communication avenues and opportunities. Instead of merely instructing on what should be done, the supervisors at ARC’s ESD should endeavour to lead their students by examples by way of communicating with their learners regarding what they should expect at the end of every emergency undertaking. Further, ARC’s ESD leadership should also explain to their students the department’s workplace culture and help the students to comprehend the communication tone needed by various departments and organization’s stakeholders (O’Brien, 2016). ARC’s ESD should equally define and explain communication styles that are effective in various contexts and situations in addition to reviewing crucial documents with the ultimate goal of ensuring that students know improvements required. Supported by Abiew (2012), ARC should demand high standards from their students and the department should equally give feedbacks to their students regarding the students’ development of skills like teamwork, communication, report writing, and time management.

In conclusion, while WIL is important in student’s learning, there a number of factors that need to be taken into consideration. For effective attainment of the goals of WIL, there is a need for active participation for students and their supervisors. On the one hand, students need to acknowledge the capability for developing a variety of attitudes, abilities, and skills that often come from WIL and accept their individual responsibilities as participants in learning processes and take accountability for their individual learning while underrating work-integrated learning. Students should also anticipate the results as well as reflect on WIL or all manner of kinds. On the other hand, organization leaders need to be role models to students by displaying themselves as they would desire the students to and make sure that expectations and goals are well and correctly understood by the students from the beginning of their placements. What is more, organizations should empower their students excess repetition of the word ‘student’ to add worth by assigning to them valuable projects or undertakings, set tasks that are somewhat challenging as well as attainable within set timeframes, and explain how various undertakings by an organization fit within the organization’s strategy or goal as this helps them understand the bigger picture of the organization. Organizations should also brief their learners to share ideas and thoughts at and during every opportunity or undertaking. This way, students will have opportunities to ask questions and approach their supervisors/mentors with any challenges they may be experiencing in their workplaces. Clarifications should be made by an organization and students should be challenged and encouraged to search for answers before fully depending upon their supervisors. Students also need to be allowed to learn through mistakes. Undoubtedly, to realize effective WIL, communication is invaluable. Communication between stakeholders is, thus, regarded as the foundation of WIL. Nonetheless, for effective communication to exist, there is a need for effective and good association between all WIL stakeholders. Thus, this paper reaffirms that to make a WIL program effective, there is a need for good partnership/association between all WIL stakeholders, including community organizations and local businesses.

Please check the recommended readings below and actually cite the content accurately. Your citations was arbitrary, meaning the genuine contents of the sources was never checked.