Learn, Teach, Learn Again

The activities were role playing, yoga, video critique, and debriefing of yoga.

I learned a lot during role playing. The PT should always talk to the patient first before talking to the caregiver as respect to the patient. The therapist has two learners: the patient and the caregiver. The caregiver can be given instructions while the therapist demonstrates to save time and effort.

For patients with VI, manual guidance is crucial to build confidence for independent ambulation. Instructions should be verbalized clearly and audibly while giving tactile cues to maximize the learning experience.

For patients with global aphasia, repetition of demonstration while providing manual guidance is important so the patient can habituate the activity.

Attainment and maintenance of attention is important for pedriatric patients. The PT should establish authority without losing the trust of the kid by using a firm, not frightening, tone of voice.  Maximizing the involvement of the caregiver can make the kid participate more.

The voice should be loud and clear when talking to patients with hearing impairment. The conversation is augmented by using gestures and movements. However if the patient has hearing loss, sign languages, videos, visual aids and writing may be utilized.

           For the yoga activity, I learned that demonstration and verbal instructions help but are not enough when teaching a novel exercise. Practice of the activity, manual corrections and repetition are important complements to further learn.

         The experience helped me realize that the difference in weight of the strategies is dependent on the learner and the activity to be learned. There is no specific strategy for a specific patient or situation. Rather, different kinds of people have different learning styles which I, a future Physical Therapist, have to discover and develop to render the best possible learning experience for the patient.