to expand on my Facebook status
I LOVE CLINICALS. I love where I am right now. I've been there a whopping 4 days and it feels like home. LIKE HOME, people! (which might also be because it's only 1.5 miles from my actual home! 5 minutes! I can wake up at 8am, take my time getting ready, and still walk in at 8:30) This time, I'm at a much smaller, much more inner-city hospital, still acute & inpatient, and both are Cleveland Clinic hospitals, but that is where the similarities end. The first few days it was difficult for me to adjust to the different level & style of patient care, but what I first took in as lower standards I now realize are just different standards for a different patient population. I won't bother with the details, but as my CI flipped on the light-bulb for me today, a surgical population requires much more detailed attention and careful documentation than a regular medical population, especially when the majority of these patients are there for COPD or chest pain. That's not to diminish their needs, they're just different. Once she said that, I had the big OH DUR moment and realized that this place is not the other place, and my concerns disappeared.
On Wednesdays I go around with the wound care PT for inpatient wound rounds. We start at 7, and I get out at 3:30, which is pretty sweet. Especially because the time FLIES. It flies regardless, but it was cool to eat lunch, get back to work at 1, and then realize that most of the day was already gone. Also, I <3 wound care. It sounds really weird, but it's true, and it always has been -- I was fascinated when this woman (who by the way is like the leading wound care specialist in the state) came to teach our class for 3 weeks almost a whole year ago, and I am still fascinated. I'm sure I said it here before, but I figure that if I can stomach looking at wounds, I might as well take advantage of that strength. (The smell, on the other hand... WHEW.) Plus I impressed her several times with how much I remembered and applied throughout the morning :D -- she said that the nurses that have been accompanying her on wound rounds for the past year don't know that much! Plus she said that my assessment in my note, which was the very first wound care note I've ever written and so don't really know how they go, she said mine was better than she could've done :D Granted, we discussed it beforehand so I knew what to say, but I said it extremely well :)
Despite that, I'm not sure I want to go into wound care, and I'll tell you why: my eyesight sucks. Maybe it was because I wasn't as close as I could've been, but I didn't & couldn't see some of the stuff that Janet noted and pointed out to me, even when she did point it out. That, and I'd be a little scared of reaching inside someone's unnatural cavity to cut out junk. Granted, you're supposed to be conservative when removing dead tissue, but I just don't have that level of fine dexterity. It's an absolute blast to generally participate in and observe, though.
The rest of the time is regular inpatient evaluations. On Tuesday I got to do 2 treatments, boring. Today I did 4 full evals, 1 treatment, and I even got to bill for helping out Jim, the other inpatient PT. Technically Anna (my CI), gets paid for my being in the right place at the right time, but why not :)
I am so glad I was at Main Campus last summer, and with Karoline. She taught me a TON, and I have such a good solid quality background from just that 10 weeks with her there that it's now easy to pick and choose what I should apply from that to this. And it continues to impress the hell outta the PTs I work with now :D Every day so far, I've heard some member of the rehab team comment to Anna how great I am in some way :D If they ever stop, I'll think I'm doing something wrong! O:-)
Oh yeah did I mention how much I LOVE LOVE LOVE the rehab team? There are 2 inpatient PTs, I think 4 outpatient PTs (some do admin stuff too), 1 each inpatient & outpatient OT, 1 each inpatient & outpatient PTA, and the PT/OT secretary. That's it. There were more PTs at main campus alone! And these people are great people. My first day, one of them brought in donuts because of me :) Tuesday they invited me to join them in the free lunch-time hospital-held yoga class, and today was "appetizer party" for December birthdays. We all eat lunch together noon-1pm, and we all chat and kibbitz the whole hour. We've already talked about opera, classical music, Europe, books, what the hell a "moon sign" is (consensus: who knows?!), and I think I managed my face well enough when the discussion turned to Twilight or American Idol. And oh yeah, on Monday, Sharon the secretary radio'd me (we communicate by walkie-talkie -- extra fun!) to let me know the cafeteria had fresh popcorn popped :D
The only negative I have so far is that at main campus, every patient really was different. They may have similar needs, but they were different enough to be interesting and to have different ability levels. Here, it's pretty much "history, strength & range of motion testing, walk them down the hallway, show them the same exercises as everyone else." Pretty standard stuff. But if nothing else, it goes by faster, so I see more people.
I realize a lot of it sounds like bragging and boasting, but I don't mean to be (ok not most of it, maybe 5%). It's just SO SO SO VINDICATING, all this positive feedback after the utter hell that was the last 2 years. It reinforces that the real learning and the real experience comes from clinicals, and school is just something you have to suffer through to get to the good part.
I think that's a good descriptive start, don't you? Oh one more thing: the gym is literally halfway between my house and the hospital, and I've managed to go twice this week already. Despite being on my feet 7 hrs already, I still manage to run 4-5 miles afterward, I'm in such a good mood (and there's this foreign "motivation" thing going on too). My feet end up miserable after, but it's just adding good mood on top of good mood, so I can tolerate it. I mean really, standing all day and then thinking "I want to run 5 miles," and then I do!!
Oh yeah, my first day there, a patient with dementia told me that I have very nice teeth :)
On Wednesdays I go around with the wound care PT for inpatient wound rounds. We start at 7, and I get out at 3:30, which is pretty sweet. Especially because the time FLIES. It flies regardless, but it was cool to eat lunch, get back to work at 1, and then realize that most of the day was already gone. Also, I <3 wound care. It sounds really weird, but it's true, and it always has been -- I was fascinated when this woman (who by the way is like the leading wound care specialist in the state) came to teach our class for 3 weeks almost a whole year ago, and I am still fascinated. I'm sure I said it here before, but I figure that if I can stomach looking at wounds, I might as well take advantage of that strength. (The smell, on the other hand... WHEW.) Plus I impressed her several times with how much I remembered and applied throughout the morning :D -- she said that the nurses that have been accompanying her on wound rounds for the past year don't know that much! Plus she said that my assessment in my note, which was the very first wound care note I've ever written and so don't really know how they go, she said mine was better than she could've done :D Granted, we discussed it beforehand so I knew what to say, but I said it extremely well :)
Despite that, I'm not sure I want to go into wound care, and I'll tell you why: my eyesight sucks. Maybe it was because I wasn't as close as I could've been, but I didn't & couldn't see some of the stuff that Janet noted and pointed out to me, even when she did point it out. That, and I'd be a little scared of reaching inside someone's unnatural cavity to cut out junk. Granted, you're supposed to be conservative when removing dead tissue, but I just don't have that level of fine dexterity. It's an absolute blast to generally participate in and observe, though.
The rest of the time is regular inpatient evaluations. On Tuesday I got to do 2 treatments, boring. Today I did 4 full evals, 1 treatment, and I even got to bill for helping out Jim, the other inpatient PT. Technically Anna (my CI), gets paid for my being in the right place at the right time, but why not :)
I am so glad I was at Main Campus last summer, and with Karoline. She taught me a TON, and I have such a good solid quality background from just that 10 weeks with her there that it's now easy to pick and choose what I should apply from that to this. And it continues to impress the hell outta the PTs I work with now :D Every day so far, I've heard some member of the rehab team comment to Anna how great I am in some way :D If they ever stop, I'll think I'm doing something wrong! O:-)
Oh yeah did I mention how much I LOVE LOVE LOVE the rehab team? There are 2 inpatient PTs, I think 4 outpatient PTs (some do admin stuff too), 1 each inpatient & outpatient OT, 1 each inpatient & outpatient PTA, and the PT/OT secretary. That's it. There were more PTs at main campus alone! And these people are great people. My first day, one of them brought in donuts because of me :) Tuesday they invited me to join them in the free lunch-time hospital-held yoga class, and today was "appetizer party" for December birthdays. We all eat lunch together noon-1pm, and we all chat and kibbitz the whole hour. We've already talked about opera, classical music, Europe, books, what the hell a "moon sign" is (consensus: who knows?!), and I think I managed my face well enough when the discussion turned to Twilight or American Idol. And oh yeah, on Monday, Sharon the secretary radio'd me (we communicate by walkie-talkie -- extra fun!) to let me know the cafeteria had fresh popcorn popped :D
The only negative I have so far is that at main campus, every patient really was different. They may have similar needs, but they were different enough to be interesting and to have different ability levels. Here, it's pretty much "history, strength & range of motion testing, walk them down the hallway, show them the same exercises as everyone else." Pretty standard stuff. But if nothing else, it goes by faster, so I see more people.
I realize a lot of it sounds like bragging and boasting, but I don't mean to be (ok not most of it, maybe 5%). It's just SO SO SO VINDICATING, all this positive feedback after the utter hell that was the last 2 years. It reinforces that the real learning and the real experience comes from clinicals, and school is just something you have to suffer through to get to the good part.
I think that's a good descriptive start, don't you? Oh one more thing: the gym is literally halfway between my house and the hospital, and I've managed to go twice this week already. Despite being on my feet 7 hrs already, I still manage to run 4-5 miles afterward, I'm in such a good mood (and there's this foreign "motivation" thing going on too). My feet end up miserable after, but it's just adding good mood on top of good mood, so I can tolerate it. I mean really, standing all day and then thinking "I want to run 5 miles," and then I do!!
Oh yeah, my first day there, a patient with dementia told me that I have very nice teeth :)