Client Centered for Inclusion

Abstract

I began my clinical career as a diagnostic audiologist. I was taught in my training program to conduct exams by taking a case history, testing the client and then counselling. The counselling was always content based and involved an explanation of the audiogram and a recommendation for how the client should proceed. This was essentially the medical-model or institution-centered model of service delivery. In this model the professional is the expert and client is the passive recipient of the expertise. The emphasis in is on causality and cure, and the client’s psycho-social issues are seldom addressed; in fact, as a graduate student I was instructed to refer the client to a mental health professional if emotions emerged in my interactions. Speech therapy had a similar professional-centered bent with a lesson plan devised and executed by the therapist. The advantages of this model are many: