Introduction
I have always been interested in observing people and thinking about why they behave as they do. Clinical psychology answers these questions, and being a specialist in this sphere is a great chance to help people with mental, emotional, or behavioral issues. Even though I have no working experience in the field of clinical psychology, I have been employed as a customer service manager for some time. This job is closely related to psychology because every client, similarly to the patients of a psychologist, should be treated individually since he possesses a unique set of personal characteristics and background. This paper describes my vision of such specialization as a multicultural practitioner-scholar and explains why I want to become a specialist in clinical psychology.
Role of a Multicultural Practitioner-Scholar
A multicultural practitioner-scholar is a highly motivated professional with profound knowledge, vast experience, and immense curiosity that drives him to conduct scientific research. According to the scholar-practitioner model developed by McClintock (2004), any practitioner-scholar should show “the capacity for emotional intelligence” (p. 396). Multicultural practitioner-scholar are marked with “formal licensing or codes of conduct” that prove their abilities and “guide educational practices” (McClintock, 2004p. 395). In addition to that, such a scholar should never stop learning new information and developing new skills through practice and education (McClintock, 2004). Another aspect of multicultural practitioner-scholars characteristics is addressed by Galanti (2014) and Frisby and O’Donohue (2018), who emphasize that cultural differences often affect the quality of provided care even in the US which is one of the most developed countries in the world. This way, a multicultural practitioner-scholar should be culturally competent to avoid misunderstanding or unintentional insults based on cultural differences.
From the written above, it could be inferred that the critical role of a multicultural practitioner-scholar is to develop the field where he or she works. In clinical psychology, becoming such an experienced and knowledgeable scholar means increasing the chance to make a scientific breakthrough and find a way to help more patients. It also means being tolerant of the representatives of other cultures, races, gender, religion, or age and working on eradicating such prejudices.
Vision
Multicultural psychology practitioner-scholars are not bonded by working with people who have mental, behavioral, or emotional problems. Even though assisting people in dealing with their psychological difficulties is respectable, this profession gives numerous multidimensional opportunities. For example, such a specialist might work for a commercial organization, train employees there, and develop a program on improving communication and relations between the team and the leader. Another possible dimension of the career is the conduction of customers analysis from a psychological perspective. This implies not practical but research work. My prior experience working as a customer service manager proves that therapy is not the only thing that a psychology practitioner could do.
Conclusion
To summarize, becoming a multicultural practitioner-scholar in the field of psychology is interesting for me because this work allows me to work with and for people. Needless to say, being a psychology practitioner-scholar imposes a great responsibility for the lives of the clients and requires a practitioner not only to be an expert in psychology but also to be tolerant and culturally competent. Most importantly, psychology is not only about helping suffering people; it provides a great chance to know how people’s minds work, why they act as they do, and how to affect their thoughts and behavior.
References
Frisby, C. L., & O’Donohue, W. T. (2018). Cultural competence in applied psychology: An evaluation of current status and future directions. Springer.
Galanti, G.-A. (2014). Caring for patients from different cultures (5th ed.). University of Pennsylvania Press.
McClintock, C. (2004). Scholar practitioner model. In A. DiStefano, K. E. Rudestam, & R.J. Silverman (Eds.), Encyclopedia of distributed learning (pp. 394–397). Sage.