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Actevate Director Robert Migliore talks about his role as a lecturer at University of Sydney.

What was the impetus for you taking on a lecturing position?

I completed a Bachelor of Science with a Rehabilitation, Counselling and Psychology major in 1993 at the University of Sydney and my ambition was always to go back to the university and be a lecturer one day. That’s why I approached the University of Sydney, to see if I could be involved. Through an established contact, I was invited to lecture at the Health Sciences campus.

What topics do you lecture about?

I am most passionate about exploring the role of the rehabilitation counsellor in the personal injury sector. In recent years, rehabilitation counselling has not focussed on developing people as practitioners who can identify those who have challenges in their work life due to injury, personality and emotional constraints. I wanted to harness the experience I have accumulated during the past 20 years and bring it to a course which, in many ways, had lost its leading edge in our industry as one that develops and nurtures practitioners.

What topics have you covered in your lectures?

I was fortunate because Dr Millington, who is the Professor of Health Sciences, gave me an opportunity to create my own curriculum for the lectures that I was running. So I focussed on the importance of understanding personality and emotional functioning with injured workers. I discussed how to engage stakeholders (and the various stakeholders that are associated with rehabilitation in our industry) and I actually had a bit of fun in the process with the students.

What differences can you see in course now compared to when you were a student?

There has been a dramatic change in the manner in which the industry approaches return to work. Unfortunately, I can’t see that the changes have been particularly beneficial for injured workers because they are often seen as an adversary and not necessarily a part of the overall process of injury management; it is actually quite a difficult thing to articulate. In the past 20 years, Work Cover has really struggled to manage the return-to-work process and as a result of those difficulties, insurers have had to take on more of the responsibility. As a result, they have focussed on basic processes as opposed to building valuable relationships with workers and employers and those people who are going to get people back to work.

How do you feel as a lecturer?

I always put myself in the place of my students. It’s not just about delivering the material, it’s also about ensuring that insights are shared and the students use that information when they are processing those materials. For example, we might be talking about a doctor’s opinion about a worker and I recently held a dedicated workshop on how to communicate with doctors. This is an area where many industry health professionals don’t seem to comprehend the importance of this communication. It's important to build a strong relationship with the doctor but, that we are also cognisant of our role and how we can bring about an outcome. Doctors can be intimidating to speak to, they are time-poor, they may be frustrated by the return-to-work processes, and they feel like they are the advocate for the worker. So if we are not mindful of that philosophical stance the doctor has already taken with the worker, we won’t produce an outcome. Moreover, the doctor will only support the worker if the doctor believes the worker is being bullied or pushed into a particular pathway or return-to-work scheme that they feel is premature. It’s a very delicate process.

What are the main things you want your students to take away from each lecture?

I like students to feel confident in their abilities to identify the root cause of the problem. We work in a scheme operationally, as I said earlier on the process of return to work. At the heart of each matter, we tend to forget that we are dealing with human beings, with feelings, personalities, barriers, challenges and strengths. I like to explore the outer edges of the process because it’s in those outer edges that we identify the real problems. If we can get to the bottom of those root problems or the root cause, then we will be able to get a much more effective result from our intervention. Unfortunately, what many health professionals, insurers and employers do is they focus on what the process at the expense of what the actual root cause is.

If you could summarise lecturing in a few words, how would you describe it?

I see it as an enormous privilege, an honour. It’s not a role that can be taken lightly, it’s something you have to respect and that’s why I use the term ‘honour’ because by giving students an insight into the work that they will be doing and the people they will be interfacing with, I hope that as a result the students will become more open and lateral thinkers. As I said before, we work in an industry where the majority of people are focussed on process; process is a result of the industry trying to simplify what is a potentially complicated scenario. Employers are often ill-equipped to deal with injured employees; both practically and emotionally so they tend to rely on process in order to ensure that there is solution. However, as a rehabilitation professional, I believe we are on the periphery of what is going on for this injured person and relying on process alone is often not enough to secure an outcome.