Third week

It's the end of another great week. Despite dreading the beginning of another tiring, busy week, I find myself coming home every night/day feeling increasingly positive about my experiences. Well, time to recap. I'll try to keep it shorter this time :-)
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M Jan 16
(day off!)

I've been wanting to add this poem for ages. It was part of the orientation manual.

The Orientee’s Dilemma

There is something I don’t know
that I am supposed to know.
I don’t know what it is I don’t know,
and yet am supposed to know.
And I feel I look stupid
if I seem both not to know it
and not know what it is I don’t know.
Therefore, I pretend I know it.
This is nerve-wrecking
since I don’t know what I must pretend to know.
Therefore, I pretend to know everything.

I feel you know what I am supposed to know
but you can’t tell me what it is
because you don’t know that I don’t know what it is.

You may know what I don’t’ know, but not
that I don’t know,
and I can’t tell you. So, you will have to
tell me everything.

R.D. Lang, Knots
(1970)
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T Jan 17
Showed up at 8am for "paperwork" time, and to prepare for the 10:00 evaluation. Still had no "paperwork" to do, so D tried to find me someone else to observe, though that fell through. Gave me a list of topics she tries to cover with the parents during the interview portion, and a sort of outline of the session. D completed the evaluation by herself in an hour and a half. She's so good! At WJSHC, 2 student clinicians (and our supervisor) takes 3 hours! And then I was given the job of writing this patient's eval report. D emailed me an example report, which is only 3 pages with large headers and the last page is pretty much a section for the pediatrician.

After lunch, inpatient was busier than usual. Sat in on another PICU rounds (my option, versus watching another PMV session (passy muir valve), and came out feeling like I understood a lot more than my first day. Got to watch more consultations, evaluations, and more therapy. Was told that Thursday I will start doing chart reviews. Also told L that I wanted to help her prepare for her leading a competency conference as my project.

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W Jan 18

Kids were great to work with. Gave GFTA to the first kid. I had to do 3 activities with each kid. D gave me verbal feedback after each kid. D returned my first draft and only had a few things to add/change ("few" compared to WJSHC!!!). Had to turn it in Friday, along with a re-assessment report for the first kid re: the GFTA results. Only 1 page :-)

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R Jan 19

Chart reviews are harder than I thought. The SLPs created a single page outline designed to summarize every client they see. By the way, I've realized that the reason it seemed SLPs in the main hospital spent a lot of their free time discussing the different cases versus their vacations and other random stuff (compared to the outpatient setting) was because they all see the same kids when necessary - whenever one SLP can't make it to see a kid, they just tell another SLP and off they go! They're so kind to each other, always offering to help each other. So that's why they have to be well informed about everyone. It's crazy.

Anyway, this one-page summary goes into the kid's traveling folder so that anyone who needs to see the kid can pick it up and not worry about goin through the massive patient chart/binder on the floors. Which brings me to my origional point - chart reviews are harder than I thought! I figured all I had to do was flip through the binder and find the info to fill in the blanks! Come on, how simple is that?! Well, patient charts are humogous!! Like the size of my orientation manual. And although papers are organized into sections and put into chronological order (sort of), reading everyone's handwriting is the pits, and you have to pull out the important information out of a bajillion notes in the binder to put into the summary. And then there are the random bits of info scattered throughout the chart to look for. SO annoying. Oh well, it was just my first time...

Also something super exciting - I got to feed a baby!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 month old girl, less than 2 feet tall, tiny little thing. She's quite fussy, but L said I did well, even though I didn't get her to drink all her formula. L said even she has trouble getting her to finish her bottle. :-) SO CUTE!

Rest of the day, watched 3 VF swallow studies and an eval. All in all a good day.

Oh, while she went to a meeting before lunch, she gave me a stack of articles about childhood TBI, and wanted me to start researching about it for her. Hehe So I find an empty binder, holepunch and oragnized her articles, then typed up a list of references that sounded interesting on the other articles. She was amazed at how efficient I made things. It's just that the school and research project mindset is still fresh in my mind. And I was quite excited to finally do something I can feel confident in!

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F Jan 20

3 kids back-to-back in the morning, doing 3 activities with each kid. Gave the Kaufman Speech Praxis Test (KSPT) to 2 yr old girl w/apraxia. Last kid cancelled (lives an hour away and the weather was bad), so I couldn't give the GFTA and Verbal Motor Production Assessment for Children (VMPAC) to him. Instead, saw the kid with autism whose new insurance company cancelled his speech services. D chose to see him out of the goodness of her heart even though it was late Friday! Fortunately, I had an activity prepared just-in-case.

After I helped clean up, we just talked for another hour! She's so great. She gave me a folder with info she had given in an in-service she gave about phonological awareness. One big part of it was about something called the Lindamood-Bell "learning process" (check it out at www.lindamoodbell.com/learningcenters/index.shtml ) and she walked me through it. It's so cool! Sounds like a great program. She also lent me an instruction video by that company. Haven't watched it yet, but D assured me the lady in it is annoying, but good to watch anyway.

So that concludes my week. Looking forward to another full week of madness!