TRAINING

your recommendations and career development. Reflective diary

This is a very useful tool when first involved in sport to track your develop- ment and highlight points of education that may need to be addressed. Later in your career it is also a help to focus your mind and point out any slipshod or easy option habits you are slipping into with- out really being aware.

It may be that you attend your first ever event and write down immediately at the end what the arena was like, was there any provision of equipment, hand wash facilities, and anyone else to help? Your reflection is how well were you prepared, how did you cope and what have you learned for the future. Will this experience cause you to alter the contents of your bag? Did you enjoy it or hate it?

Likewise more extended reflective diaries kept over a full season or for a complete sports tour can highlight highs and lows for you personally and often throw up important points to improve provision of care and safety for all.

Critical event/experience We all tend to identify a critical event with an incident that has not been man- aged well, but in fact we can use both well-managed and badly managed events under this heading. This is almost a one- off case study but need not be as lengthy.

The importance in this instance is your reflection on the event and your recom- mendations to implement change or not as a result. Again set the headings you wish to address, state why you are writing this up eg. you felt you did not handle this situation well, you could and should have done better, you felt really pleased with the handling and outcome.

Sometimes a critical event will be brought to light when you are quite sure of your actions but another member of staff may then suggest the opposite or alternate views. This is a good chance for both to write a critical review, and then invite a mentor to meet with you and discuss. All of this, the original discussion, critical review and mentor involvement can be added to your portfolio. This is looking seriously at reflective practice and gain-

ing development from the experience.

Annual reports Good practice requires that we keep records of patient treatments and we should all be involved in audit of these records. If you are involved with a partic- ular sport and attend training sessions, competitions and travel on tour with that sport it is not difficult to audit your records on a regular basis. It just takes time and organisation. It is very easy to produce a lovely set of statistics in such cases, but there should be a good reason for doing this.

The numbers and incidence of attendance for example are important to have but a good, written report attached should highlight the special involvements of par- ticular staff, the lessons learnt and indicate examples of good practice and identify problems and poor outcomes.

For example, it was only by producing statistics highlighting the numbers of con- tacts and making a written report of hours of duty that we eventually persuaded management to implement optimum num- bers of support staff needed to provide a viable service at major athletic events.

It is much more daunting to try to pro- duce a worthwhile annual report if you work only in a clinical situation and even more so if you are the sole practitioner.

A very easy way to get the basics for an annual report is to make entries in your appointment diary or similar at the end of each week of the numbers attending, con- ditions treated and note any good results and any worries or problems. Also each time you discharge a patient, do a full end of treatment summary and transfer the important outcome points to your outline annual report.

Such reports whether for travel, training or clinic can be very valuable items in a portfolio. They often provide a summary of your work and can indicate recommen- dations for alterations to future practice and provisions.

Summarising your development over sev- eral reports, covering different years can be a very good indicator of advances in thinking and developing skills both clini- cal and managerial.

To conclude Lifelong development can be rewarding as well as necessary for the development and continuation of good practice and skill enhancement. I hope this article has given some food for thought and pointed out some means of attaining CPD. Other ways not addressed here include prepara- tion and delivery time of talks and lec- tures, undertaking planned research, pub- lication of research, in-service training or obtaining a higher qualification.

I wish to express thanks to and acknowl- edge the help and advice given by Linda Mitchell, Education Officer of the Association of Chartered Physiotherapists in Sports Medicine, in the preparation of this article.

Joan Watt, MA, GradDP, MCSP SRP is senior physiotherapist to the Great Britain Target Shooting Federation World Class Performance Squad, president of Scottish Athletics Ltd., chair of the board of directors of the Sports Massage Association and a member of the British Olympic Association Physiotherapy Committee. She has published - ‘Massage for Sport’ and has attended World Championships, Olympic and Commonwealth Games.

Resources “Developing A Portfolio” available in printed or CD-ROM format from Sarah Fellows on 020 7306 6608 or order on line at www.csp.org.uk/shop

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