Select one or more of the activities below to develop your skills in supervision.
If you are registered on the site, you can write up your reflections in the ‘reflections area’. Click on the ‘my area’ link at the top of the page to access your personal pages. Please note you must be logged in to do this.

1. Using psychometric tests

If you have already completed Sci59, find the results print-out. If you haven’t done so already, arrange to complete the questionnaire. It is available for BMA members on the BMA website.

• Looking at the suggested specialties in the print-out, to what extent do the suggestions match specialties that you are interested in?
• With reference to the guidelines given above on the use of psychometric testing, describe how you would approach a career support session in which you were discussing the Sci59 results of a student/trainee who was having difficulty making career decisions. 

2. Reviewing the robustness of a career decision using ROADS

Next time a trainee comes to you to discuss their career plans, use the ROADS criteria in the discussion (see page 7 for explanation of the ROADS criteria).

• What specific issues did the trainee raise as you discussed each of the ROADS questions?
• In what ways did having the ROADS checklist help structure the discussion?
• Were there other issues not covered by ROADS that were also relevant? If so, describe these?
• What skills did you need to use as you facilitated the discussion of the ROADS questions?
• What was the outcome of the discussion?

3. Structuring a career-planning session

After you have completed a career planning session with a trainee, reflect on the following questions.

• To what extent did the session follow the suggested structure: clarifying; exploring; evaluating; action planning?
• Describe whether there were any stages that you should have spent less (or more) time on?
• The aim of a career-planning session is to ‘move the recipient forward’ in some way during the session. Do you feel that you achieved this aim?
  o If ‘Yes’, identify what it was that you did during the session that helped the trainee.
  o If ‘No’, looking back over the session, what could you have done differently for the session to have been of greater use to the trainee?

4. Career-counselling skills

Interpersonal skills based on responding appropriately to an individual or group cannot simply be learnt by reading about them. As Kidd (2006) points out, you need to practise these skills and receive appropriate feedback. Next time you have had a particularly sensitive career support session with a student/trainee, try to write down as much as you can remember about what was discussed during the session. It is best if you do this as soon as possible after the session has ended.

• Looking through your account of what happened during the session, how well do you think you listened? What stopped you listening at any point?
• Can you identify specific examples of where in the session you used ‘understanding skills’? And in retrospect, can you identify places in the session where greater use of these skills might have been helpful?
• Similarly, can you identify specific examples of where in the session you used ‘interpretative skills’? And what about places in the session where greater use of these skills might have been useful?
• Looking back at your answers to these questions, what skills do you want to focus on developing in your next career support session?