Guidelines to support students during practicum training at a University of Limpopo Province, South Africa

Abstract

Students registered for a Bachelor of Psychology are required to complete a six-month practicum during the second semester in their fourth year of study before they graduate. During their practicum, they are called student registered counsellors. These student registered counsellors also offer counseling to clients suffering from trauma. Counselling trauma clients exposes the students to various challenges which affect their normal functioning, making them less effective when they offer counseling. The aims of this study were to explore the challenges experienced by student registered counsellors during their practicum and develop guidelines that will assist to identify and offer support to affected students while they are caring for trauma clients. The objectives of the study were to describe the profile of clients counselled by student registered counsellors, to explain the activities and roles played by student registered counsellors during counselling, to determine the effects of counselling trauma clients on student registered counsellors, to explain the mechanisms for identifying student registered counsellors affected during practicum, to identify coping strategies used by students to deal with challenges encountered during practicum training, to explore the kind of support received by student registered counsellors during practicum, and to develop guidelines for supporting students who experience challenges while caring for clients during practicum. The study was qualitative in nature. A phenomenological research design was used. The population comprised former student registered counsellors who had completed their practicum. Purposive sampling was used to select 12 participants. The former student registered counsellors were asked to come on campus for the interviews after they had completed their practicum. The researcher took into consideration both institutional and external ethical issues. Data was collected using a semi-structured interview guide. The semi-structured interviews were conducted in the researcher’s office. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyse the collected data. The findings of the study outlined several challenges, such as struggles to adjust to a new environment, and countertransference, that were encountered by student registered counsellors during practicum, and which were related to training at the university and the practicum site. The study also helped to identify ways that can be adopted to deal with the challenges encountered by student registered counsellors. At the end of the study, based on the findings, the researcher was able to develop guidelines that will be used to support student counsellors on practicum.