I am, generally speaking, a "learn by doing" kind of girl. To me, learning something from a book whether it is OT or fixing a car, is challenging. I'm just not built that way.
Last semester on fieldwork, I got to "try out" a lot of the things that we had read about or been lectured on. It was great. I had a nice OT with which I worked great. She was very detail oriented and let me know why she was doing things, but still let me try whatever I felt comfortable with (under her close supervision, of course). I was comfortable. I saw a steady core of 4 or 5 patients with a few one-time patients sprinkled in.
This semester, I thought would be a gradual "up grade". I would have basically the same patient each week and be working on a skill that would either gradually improve or wouldn't. At any rate, I would know basically what skills to work on from week to week. Ugh! I've only a total of 3 patients in my 4 weeks. I saw the first patient 2 times, but have been getting new patients each week since then. For me, this "unknown factor" has made fieldwork very stressful. Not only do I not know the patient, but at what level they are performing. For example, 2 weeks ago, I was supposed to see J. I had gathered the information from her chart from when she was admitted, but didn't get to see her that week, so when I met with her this past week, all of the STG they had listed had been met. When I went to start the treatment session, I found out that she had also met all of her LTG and was getting ready to be d/c from OT. I felt like my session was pretty much blown all to pieces, though she was a lovely lady and I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with her about fishing spots that we had in common. I ended up working on ue strength, even though she was very strong.
This week, I am due my 4th new patient in 5 weeks. I know that this will be commonplace in the real world, but I am finding it frustrating when my Tx session plans are due 4 days in advance.
No comments:
Post a Comment