What a week it has been! I can hardly believe it's Friday tomorrow! What I really can't believe is that tomorrow marks the end of week four...I will be half way done with my first site!!!
I've been treating a lot of patients this past week; especially the last two days. Up until this week I've never felt overly stressed about getting my daily notes done. Today hit and I walked into the office with a stack of charts waiting for me on my desk (yes...I have my "own" desk). It's not like someone else put them there for me to do, I left them there on Wednesday night because I did not have time to finish them before I left. Each time I sat down to work on notes, one of the OTR's would ask me to go work with another patient. I did a total of 6.5 sessions today. That's the most patient's I've personally treated in one day. I wrote notes for 5 of these sessions, plus I had 3 notes to finish from yesterday. I wasn't able to sit and catch up on notes until after my second to last patient around 3pm.
Despite being slightly overwhelmed, I've walked away from work each day this week feeling better and better about what I'm doing. I feel like I am getting a pretty good grip on what I'll be doing for the rest of my life. It's kind of funny to me that the one thing that I hated in school is what I'm the most comfortable doing at the clinic. Passive range of motion (PROM) is the most basic way to make a huge difference in a patient's overall ability to function (at least that's how I am viewing it). I've been hesitant to do PROM with a couple different patient's because of the complexity of the condition, but my OTR has been pushing me to do more and it's helping me build skills and confidence.
The other thing that I struggled with for a bit at school was doing transfers (to and from wheelchairs). I thought I had mastered the technique at school so I wasn't too worried about it--until I had to do it in real life! Transferring someone who is fully capable of walking and has normal muscle tone (even if they try to act differently) is not even close to transferring someone with high (or low) muscle tone with limited walking ability. I'm struggling quite a bit with it and I'm really having to work on it so that I don't drop a patient! My height continues to be a bit of a battle, but I'm learning to adjust how I do the transfers to make it work for my height. I am sure my program director would be happy to know that while I may not always have proper body mechanics, I am at least thinking about what I should do before I start the transfer!
Tomorrow I will be going over my midterm evaluation with my supervisor. I'm rather nervous/anxious to find out from the professional(s) how I'm really doing in the field! :)
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