Supporting a Student Sam is a final-year speech pathology student, on her final placement. Common themes have arisen in the feedback from CEs in all Sam's placements to date. She has just managed to...

Supporting a Student Sam is a final-year speech pathology student, on her final placement. Common themes have arisen in the feedback from CEs in all Sam's placements to date. She has just managed to reach the pass criteria in previous placements. Issues include lots of support needed for decision making during sessions; gaps in the connections between observations and the clinical presentation of the client; and problems sorting relevant from irrelevant information (including observations) – often hones in on the irrelevant. When prompted by her CE, she can describe her observations at a physical, impairment level but cannot relate these to the patient as a person and how they may affect the patient's life. She struggles to incorporate the client's and caregivers’ wishes, opinions and needs into her planning. When asked to research specific information, she gets sidetracked and returns with lots of extraneous, irrelevant information. She does not often initiate discussion with her CE, Chris, and her post-session reflections are very concrete and self-focussed. When asked what she is finding difficult, Sam struggles to answer. She says, ‘I just don't know where to start. I get lost in a sea of information. I don't know what's relevant or irrelevant’. Although Chris finds COMPASS ® useful to pinpoint Sam's reasoning as an area of concern, she would like more support to structure Sam's learning and develop her clinical reasoning skills.