Clinical Integration and Scope of Practice · Clinical Exercise

Recognise, Communicate, Refer

Everything in this module exists to make you better at one decision, which is recognising when something in front of you belongs to someone else. Six presentations to route, and two clients who would rather you did not.

What this exercise practises

Recognising referral indicators and their urgency, holding a referral threshold when the client would prefer you did not, declining to offer a reassurance you are not able to give, and saying a great deal about biology without crossing into advice.

Calibrated for counselling practice. Recognise, communicate, facilitate. The two failures this exercise targets are missing a biological contributor and overstepping into assessment because your grasp of the biology is good enough to be plausible.

Estimated time to complete this exercise: 20 minutes

1Six referrals
2Rafael
3The bleeding
4Scope
5Close

Before you begin

How this one works

Everything in this module exists to make you better at one decision, which is recognising when something in front of you belongs to someone else.
Part 1 asks you to route six presentations. Getting the destination approximately right matters less than recognising that a referral is indicated at all, but the destination is worth knowing, because a vague referral is easy for a client to not act on.
Parts 2 and 3 are the harder half. Both involve a client who does not want the referral you are about to suggest, or who is asking you for a reassurance you are not able to give.
The depth is set for counselling practice. Recognise, communicate, facilitate. Not assess, diagnose or prescribe, and the difference appears here as the difference between right and wrong answers.
Nothing is graded and nothing is recorded. Reloading starts it again.

Two failures are possible in this territory and only one of them gets discussed. Missing a biological contributor is the familiar one. Overstepping into assessment because you have enough knowledge to be plausible is the other, and the better your grasp of the biology the more available it becomes.

References

  1. Gandaglia, G., Briganti, A., Jackson, G., Kloner, R. A., Montorsi, F., Montorsi, P., & Vlachopoulos, C. (2014). A systematic review of the association between erectile dysfunction and cardiovascular disease. European Urology, 65(5), 968–978. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eururo.2013.08.023
  2. Portman, D. J., & Gass, M. L. S. (2014). Genitourinary syndrome of menopause: New terminology for vulvovaginal atrophy. Menopause, 21(10), 1063–1068. https://doi.org/10.1097/GME.0000000000000329