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JCPSLP

Volume 18, Number 3 2016

145

Ethical conversations

Helen Smith

KEYWORDS

CULTURAL AND

LINGUISTIC

DIVERSITY

MAJORITY-

WORLD

VOLUNTEERING

NARRATIVE

ETHICS

“I can’t believe you want

to leave at lunch time”

A reflection on how narrative ethics may inform ethical

practice in cross-cultural and majority-world contexts

Helen Smith

constantly complaining at their frustration that they couldn’t

fit in all the content they had planned.

Over lunch one day Sarah asked one of the facilitators

why everything was being covered so quickly. While English

was the official language for education and business,

English was a second (or third language) for most of the

attendees. The majority of the participants had a TAFE-level

qualification and were finding it challenging to keep up. The

facilitator responded to Sarah’s question by saying:

You all had to travel on Tuesday. We had expected

you to travel on Monday as it was a public holiday but

none of you could be bothered to do that. And none

of you will stay all day on Friday. You all want to leave

at lunch time. So our carefully planned 4-day course is

being squashed into 2½ days.

Sarah commented she felt like the facilitator was saying

she and her fellow participants didn’t value the educational

opportunity to improve the specialist services they would

provide to their patients. Nothing could have been further

from the truth. On reflection, Sarah wondered how she

could have helped the facilitators change their perception of

the participants. She was concerned about the facilitator’s

misperception that the participants were not motivated

or were lazy. She wondered how this valued and valuable

training could have been less than optimal because of such

a lack of understanding. She did not feel empowered to

continue the conversation as the facilitator rushed off to

prepare for the next session. Sarah certainly did not feel

valued or respected by the facilitator.

The background story

A narrative approach to ethical reasoning considers an

individual’s or cultural group’s life story (Speech Pathology

Australia, 2014). The values and experiences each

participant brings to the story are considered. This allows

both sets of voices in the story to be heard. Each person in

the story arrives at the situation described from their own

perspective. It is only through the consideration of these

multifaceted perspectives that a new and deeper shared

understanding can be reached.

The volunteer presenters had dedicated valuable

vacation time to come to Africa to deliver training. They

had spent many hours preparing the training program prior

to their departure from home. They came with slides and

handouts and workbooks. The timing of the trip had been

made to accommodate the volunteers’ usual summer

holiday period to have the least impact on their own local

I

n the mid 1990s for 2½ years I was a volunteer speech

pathologist with Australian Volunteers International in

a sub-Saharan African country. This story is based on

my time working in country. This piece will use a narrative

ethics framework (Speech Pathology Australia, 2014)

to consider the story; the current story as I experienced

it, a reflection on the background story from multiple

perspectives and a reimagined future story. Finally,

some considerations for ethical volunteering as speech

pathologists in culturally and linguistically diverse majority-

world contexts will be provided.

The current story

Sarah,

1

a hard- working and dedicated rehabilitation

technician

2

returned one Monday from a rare funded

professional development opportunity. She was the mother

of two and the adoptive mother of three (her sister’s

children, adopted after her sister’s death from HIV the year

before), and it had taken a huge amount of organisation

and personal commitment for Sarah to attend the course.

(The course was based in a central location requiring 3–4

hours travel and several nights away from home.)

The course was funded and run by a service organisation

from North America which had recruited volunteer

specialists from their own country, provided them with travel

and living expenses but no salary, so they could provide

a week-long specialist training program to local health

workers. The service organisation had also funded the

travel and living expenses for the local health workers to

attend. A rare and generous gift with the goal of improving

the provision of specialist services to people in the country.

Sarah, a keen learner, was always motivated to improve

her knowledge and skills. Therefore, I was surprised on the

Monday morning following the course when my question

asking how her course had been was met with a huge sigh

and a look of despondency. Concerned, I asked Sarah

what had happened.

Sarah started by expressing her delight in the amazing

opportunity to develop her understanding of the specialist

area. She was delighted that what she was required to do

for patients at our hospital made more sense as the course

rolled out.

Sarah, however, then expressed her frustrations. First,

the “whole” course as outlined in the brochure had not

been provided. Second, each day, regardless of the

presenter, the content appeared very rushed, with no time

to consolidate learning or to ask questions. Despite the

speed of delivery, she commented the presenters were