25 March 2015

Today is a milestone in my professional career. Today, I met and took part of a session of an actual patient with a real neurologic insult. Suffice to say, I was both very excited and nervous for this activity.

The session didn’t go as bad as I imagined it would be when they announced the activity. The patient was very cooperative and I didn’t have a hard time instructing her. However, if my client had a cognitive impairment, my way of teaching may not be too effective. I think it could be improved by using more specific words for instructing as well as using different cues to guide the patient. I think I was able to evaluate well too although observing the client while guarding and instructing was really difficult.

I was unable to ask the patient if they had any questions and clarifications, assuming that she understood well since she was nodding and smiling. I realized later on that I do the same to be polite to the speaker although sometimes I don’t understand either. In the future, I should try to probe deeper and test if the client really understands.

I also realized how building rapport is important with real clients. Today’s client was very friendly and cooperative, however not all clients are the same and instructing them would be more challenging. There’s a lot of trust needed between the therapist and the client when performing exercises such as our activity today which involved stair ambulation. Building rapport can help build that trust.

Lastly, I learned how compassion to patients is an important skill a good PT must have. As I observed the interns interact with their clients, I saw how they are genuinely concerned with the patients, not only on their performance in the clinic, but on their well being in general.