Well I wasn’t as good about updating the blog during my outpatient ortho clinical as I was about inpatient, but that’s okay. I felt that I had waaay more to share with inpatient being that it was my first time AND it was the rotation that intimidated me the most. By the 6th week of inpatient I had really started coming around to the setting. It was no longer something I considered completely off the table after grad school. I gave it a strong maybe. There were still a lot of things that intimidated me about it…mainly that patients are much more fragile than they are in outpatient. Face it, most patients will walk into your outpatient clinic. You don’t have to spend time trying to help them get out of bed with all these tubes hanging out of them. Anyway, like I said…I had given it a solid maybe.
My first day of outpatient ortho felt like coming home. What on earth was I thinking for even considering the inpatient setting?! I felt comfortable right away at the new clinic. I immediately jumped right in without any problems. Talking to patients was super easy for me. The hospital was more difficult to find things to talk about. Once you talk about what they were watching on TV you’re brain kinda freezes. You can’t even talk about the freaking weather outside…”Sooo…great weather we are having huh? Oh, right..you’ve been in the hospital for a week…uhh…” Okay, it’s not THAT bad, but it’s still a lot easier to strike up a convo with someone who isn’t in the hospital.
Anyway, 6 weeks has gone by with my ortho rotation. It was pretty slow in the beginning. I don’t think my CI quite understood that I had already done 13 weeks of ortho and was seeing a full caseload on my own beforehand. I tried to bring it up with him without sounding like “uhh hey man, I was doing way more than this before and now I’m getting bored.” Instead, when we talked about the next day’s schedule and my CI would ask if it looked okay I would say, “Yea, I’ll take whoever, whenever. I’m fine with seeing more patients.” It wasn’t until the 2nd to last week that I went from a measly 5 patients in my 9 hour days to 10. That was because one of the other therapists got sick and they put all his patients on my case load. Man, did that day fly right on by. It was stressful at times but at least I wasn’t getting bored. From that point on I was seeing more patients.
The location of the clinic was in a more rural area. No joke..I’d say 95% of the patients coming into the clinic owned chickens!!! Anyway, each patient was seen for 1 hour. Most patients on the other PTs schedules would overlap with one another by a half hour but I never had more than two patients overlap. That usually meant that, at the worst, I would get to see a patient on their own for 30 minutes, then I’d have two patients in for 30 minutes until patient #1 left, then I would have patient #2 for 30 minutes on their own. The other PTs might have 2 patients in at one time, constantly.
The average age of the patients I was seeing was probably around 70 years old. Most people in the area were retired so it made sense. I did see younger people as well. I mostly saw patients for low back pain, shoulder injuries, knee injuries, and the always popular, sciatica.
I had to do an inservice..again! Sheesh, my program only requires them for 8+ week clinicals and yet both my 6 weekers asked me to do an inservice. My inpatient inservice was on depression and its effects on the acute care patient (i.e. length of stay, rate of recovery etc). My outpatient inservice was on dance and its effects on balance in older adults. That was a fun one because I incorporated some swing things and tied in how a popular swing dance routine that is known throughout the world features a lot of the exercises we provide patients with for balance (i.e. single leg balance, weight shifting, forward/sideways/backward walking, grapevine etc).
I did well on this rotation. I was with the owner of the clinic. He rated me at entry level for everything by the end of my rotation which is awesome. Even better…I got a “well, right now we don’t have a need for another PT but when you’re done in a year we would love it if you would consider us and send in an application…we don’t know what our situation will be like then.” Woohoo! And my inpatient CI told me that he would highly recommend me to those in charge of the hiring process if I ever wanted to come back to the hospital and work when I’m done with school. Nice! So pretty much I feel like I’m on America’s Next Top Model when they go on “go-sees” (I put a link there if you don’t know what I’m talking about…granted that girl is uber annoying but it was the best video I could find!) where they meet with different brands and show them their photo portfolio and then try on the brands clothes and walk around for them and then the brand people tell them whether or not they would ever book them…I feel like that!…but with PT clinical rotations. Yea we are there to learn and such, but you also have to think of these rotations as job interviews too…because if the clinic likes you, you might just have a job waiting for you when you finish school. That, or you’ll at least get really good letters or rec when you’re done.
My best advice for clinicals…have good rapport with your patients (your CI will LOVE you if the patients love you). Don’t be hesitant to jump in right away if your CI asks if you want to try something (you might mess up, but that’s why you’re CI is there…now is the time to be getting feedback before you’re in the real world on your own!), at the same time…don’t be afraid to ask for help (your CI will appreciate that you know your boundaries and need assistance…they don’t expect that you know everything! Just make sure to ask for help when you’re away from the patient). Take initiative…get to the clinic early to review charts…basically, once you’ve gotten the hang of the clinic try to make sure you do things without being asked first. It really blows your CI’s mind when you start fitting in with the clinic and begin functioning like a real PT.
Anyway, I guess that covers just about all of it. If I think of anything else then I’ll post it 🙂
P.S….the blog is 25 views shy of a total of 50,000!!! So hey, thanks for reading and I hope you have found what you came here looking for! 🙂
The Life of a DPT Student 