This placement has provided a list of anxiety provoking circumstances, most of which I felt was not ready or prepared for, within my professional training. Within this placement there is not an occupational therapy service in situ, this means that there is not a full time occupational therapy supervisor always on call to spoon feed the information to you. There is an on site supervisor, however my supervisor was a nurse who had only a limited knowledge of occupational therapy. There was no occupational therapy documentation in place and the record keeping was not in line with the way that I had observed in previous placements within hospital and community health services. Although I have always been good at time management, I have had to learn to manage my time with all service users identified. I have had to put into practice all skills learned within advanced communication skills. These circumstances meant that there were opportunities for me to start from fresh and put practice into theory, however I did not see the benefits of this at the beginning of the placement.
At the beginning of the time within this setting, I felt that the placement was not applicable and that it would have been more beneficial to have a traditional placement. I felt that our level of training did not give us enough valid theory to implement an occupational therapy service. I felt that it was our job to make occupational therapy work for all the service users and that all interventions would be big and have a huge meaning to the individual, which put me into panic mode. All that kept on running through my mind was that this was a six week placement, which meant that there wasn't enough time to work with these individuals!
After the initial panic, I began to rethink exactly what it was that we were expected to do within this setting. We identified three individuals that we could work with closely and who had realistic aims that were doable within the time that we had on placement. We were able to sit with most of the service users and promote the philosophy of occupational therapy and identify individual's needs.We implemented a social weekly activity of bingo, which helped to bring all the service users together, of which they all looked forward to returning to the following week. We have worked closely with an individual who has multiple sclerosis and with daily hand mobilisation and hand exercises we are improving his hand strength so that he is able to work towards a long term goal of eating using both hands. We are also working closely with an individual who has had a stroke and acquired brain injury. When we first arrived at placement we were told that this member of staff had very short term memory and that we may struggle when trying to work with him. We chose to assess the individual cognitive skills, which highlighted an issue with attention. With this information we were then able to implement daily washing training, which is helping the individual increase his attention span.
This placement has allowed me to explore occupational therapy theory and to put it into practice. It has allowed me to grow as a person in all ways. I have gained in confidence and knowledge. It has been a journey of both personal and professional learning.
