Charlie's Angels

I finished my musculoskeletal outpatients placement at Charles Gardner Hospital (aka. Charlie's) a couple weeks ago. We were the first group there where it's been all girls, so we left them a momento of us as Charlie's Angels in our lovely blue smurf uniforms. =)

I enjoyed my placement there and learned a lot. Perhaps I realise how much more there is for me to learn, but at least I have a starting framework now from which to build. We had 1.5 hrs with new patients and 1 hour with subsequent visits, thus we saw about 4-5 patients a day (if they showed up). We started keeping a tally of the number of cancellations, and I won by a long shot with 12 cancellations in total and 6 no shows. Apparently, it's not only me as my classmate who took over my patients is already leading in the cancellations this time around. I wonder how I'll manage in a private practice, where time is more of an issue and physios at some clinics see about 10-12 patients a day. Personally, I appreciate the time to do a full assessment so we can diagnose and classify each patient instead of just treating their symptoms. Hopefully wherever I end up working, I'll be able to continue to have the luxery of time as well as supportive people around me to continue my learning.

I'm now doing my placement in the Neuro Outpatients department at another hospital. I have a variety of patients, some who've had a stroke, multiple sclerosis, leukocyte encephalopathy, friedrich's ataxia, and other neuropathies and myopathies. It's been interesting seeing patients with symptoms I've only learned about theoretically. For example, some stroke patients end up with what's called Expressive Aphasia, in which the part of the brain which formulates words together into sentences gets damaged. Thus, they're cognitively there and can understand what you're saying and doing, but if you ask them a question, they aren't able to say what they want to say and usually it doesn't make any sense. I have one guy who ends up singing quite a lot of what he tries to say. In general, all of my patients are friendly and it's a nice atmosphere to work in since the patients attending there all know each other and chat to one another. It's been quite physically draining at this placement so far so I'm pretty much exhausted at the end of the day. Also, I think I'm getting mentally exhausted with all this information overload. It's not only the conditions, but remembering all the little things that all just adds up, learning communication skills, manual handling, report writing. Probably for the first 2 weeks of any placement, I feel like I don't know anything and finally by the last 2 weeks I'm starting to get a hang of things... too bad by that time it's the start of another placement and it's back to the beginning again.

On another note:

• 3 weeks till the end of this placement
• 2 months until my final Oral exam
• 3 months until I'm FINISHED MY MASTERS in PHYSIOTHERAPY (assuming all goes well)
• 3.5 months till I'm HOME!!!
• 125 days until my brother's wedding =)