Professional specificity, use of the shared psychoeducation experience and present-day psychoeducation practice
With regard to professional identity, Vilbrod (2003) asserts that any specificity cannot be considered timeless, and is the result of compromises made necessary by the evolution of societal and communal contexts. In this text, the authors demonstrate that the shared psychoeducation experience, as initially conceived, does not constitute the cornerstone of psychoeducation’s intervention practices. Instead of solely relying on shared psychoeducation experience, they claim that the specificity of psychoeducation depends on an aggregate of fundamental concepts. However, the Ordre des psychoéducateurs et psychoéducatrices du Québec (OPPQ 2010, 2011a) defines the psychoeducator’s profession as a form of support provided in the context of shared psychoeducation experience, using daily or explicitly planned activities, which corresponds to the initial definition (traditional) of shared psychoeducation experience (Gendreau, 2001; Renou, 2005, 2014). The issue before us is the following: to what extent is shared psychoeducation experience still the foundation of the specific identity of psychoeducators? Two objectives are pursued: 1) To outline the usage of shared psychoeducation experience by psychoeducators within the context of their professional duties. 2) To establish to what extent the definition of the profession as designated by the OPPQ remains representative of the modern practice of its members. The results reveal that the psychoeducator uses shared psychoeducation experience minimally. He considers that he is in a shared psychoeducation experience as much with the consultants than the clients. Defining the profession of psychoeducator and its relationship with the notion of shared psychoeducation experience, as defined traditionally, is discordant with the modern practice of psychoeducation.