I'm settling in here pretty good. It helps to be busy with my clinical and not just laying around doing nothing all day long. I have been a bit homesick at times, but not as much as I thought I would be. The commute to Perrysburg is only 15 to 25 minutes depending on the day, which saves me so much gas money. I could also really get used to having a 2 car garage and huge bathroom and a dishwasher and a refrigerator that makes its own ice.
My clinical is going ok so far. It was going really good for the first few days. My CI seemed to be really understanding about how intimidating it can be to start a new clinical and get used to all the new documentation and computer system. Yesterday, however, was NOT good day. I will back up though and just give a little bit of background info as to how my week has gone.
First of all, I am my CI's first student ever. He's been out of school for just a couple of years and he's been working in outpatient for only 4 months. He is foreign and English is not his first language (although he speaks it very well and technically is an American citizen), so there is a cultural difference between us. I am not sure if he is Italian or Romanian, but I think it would be rude to ask, so I haven't. He is very knowledgeable and excited to share his knowledge. He also really really really really really really really likes to talk.
One of my pet peeves is interrupting people or being interrupted. Thus, I try not to ever interrupt anyone. This means that my CI talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and talks and I never get a word in edgewise. He also jumps from topic to topic and subject to subject in the middle of sentences. He is also very blunt. So, this is pretty much how every day goes: I get to work. I start putting my stuff away and he starts talking to me, "Hi, how are you? Good. Don't be nervous. All this information will come to you. I just want to share this with you. Let's put this CD in the computer for you to watch. Can you print out today's schedule? Oh, here, let me print this article for you first. Don't worry about reading all of this at once. It will be too much for you. Did you get a chance to read that article I gave you yesterday? Here is this book I brought for you to look at. Ok so let's look at the spine and I will show you what I mean by an ERSL. You would treat it by - Oh our next patient is here." We will go see the patient while he continues to talk to me like this and I can't focus on ANYTHING because he is constantly changing the subject and confusing the heck out of me. I just have to keep reminding myself that I am his first student ever.
Another thing - My CI things that every single patient has psychological issues. One of the doctors at the clinic studies the psychological issues associated with chronic pain. He made the mistake of telling my CI some of his thoughts about it one day and now my CI thinks that every single patient who comes to our clinic has psychological issues due to their pain. Thus, we are not allowed to empathize with any patients, because it feeds into their psychological issues.
Also, My CI uses 99.999999999% manual therapy for his treatment and 0.000000001% therapeutic exercise. Thus, I am learning absolutely nothing about how to progress a therapeutic exercise program, but I am learning manual therapy techniques that I have never even heard of before. Don't get me wrong, this is a good thing. My CI does get results with his patients and he does an excellent job helping them to get better fast. But, I feel like we aren't doing anything that I learned in class and if I ever get a job somewhere that I feel like using therapeutic exercise to treat my patients, I will have no idea what to do since I didn't do it on my clinical. This clinical is technically supposed to be "outpatient orthopedics" and it is actually "outpatient manual therapy." I'm not knocking it. I think it works. I just wish I could learn a little bit more about ther ex also.
My main complaint - My CI treats me like I don't know how to do anything. It's true, I don't know how to do all the manual therapy that he does. But I DO know how to take a patient's history during an initial eval. He asked me to do that yesterday and then interrupted me at least 50 times in front of the patients to ask questions that I hadn't gotten to yet. It made me look really stupid in front of the patients and I was really embarrassed. He says he was doing that to "help me out" but I did not need his help with that and I told him so. He told me to not be so defensive and that he would just leave me alone with the patients from now on. At first I felt bad about that, but the more I think about it now, I don't feel bad. I did not appreciate being treated like an idiot in front of the patients and I would rather work with them on my own than have him sitting behind me interrupting me every 2 seconds to ask a question that I was going to ask next. Ugh. It was horrible. Although, I will say, that after that happened yesterday, he spent the rest of the day praising my documentation and the day did end well. So maybe it won't be so bad after all. I could go into so much more detail about my concerns and issues with this clinical, but I think for now it's best to just leave it at that. I should just be appreciative of the fact that I am finally working with outpatients who do not have IVs and bed pans and that it only takes me 20 minutes to get to work every day. Yep, I'll just leave it at that.
No comments:
Post a Comment