Endings and beginnings

Yesterday, after two years on the executive committee (one as vice-president and one as president), I stepped back. I gave up the LaTUCS presidency, and the position was successfully turned over to the new president. I’ve had a lot of fun and given a lot of time and effort to the role. Now it’s someone else’s turn! 😀

Today, I start placement, working in Paediatric OT at a specialist school. I’m excited and looking forward to it – I wonder what’s in store? It’s my final placement, in the area that I really want to work when I qualify. So let’s see how it goes!

 

“What do I need right now?”

The following link landed in my inbox last night. I needed to hear it. So I’m passing it onto you, in the hope it helps someone else.

Simplify Self-Care 

Week 4 of the project, and I’ve rediscovered one of the more challenging aspects of literature searches: broad topics! Oh well. I’ll be working on that today, and other elements of life are going well.

Here, have a photo of a rainbow I took on the weekend.

 

Musings

Well I’ve had a nice little break and today I dive back into the uni world of classes and assignments for a six week block.

The rest of the year is falling into place in some ways – I know where I’m going on my last two placements, for example. This leads to excitement: as one student coordinator (who’s known me since second year) said to me recently, I’m only six months away from finishing uni and qualifying as an occupational therapist! It also leads to a few nerves now and again: six months until I’m trying to find work, and new accommodation, and and and…

So I put the breaks on that, focus on what I have now and what I’ve achieved so far, and remember to have gentle confidence in myself. What happens will happen. Until it does, I’ll take contentment where I can, and enjoy the nice things along the way. Like watching Moana last Friday night with friends at a choir singalong social evening. And cooking lovely things like last night’s dinner: a lentil bolognese dish I adapted from Cooking on a Bookstrap. Follow the link to see the recipe – and pre-order their cook book, due out in August. I’m sorely tempted to get it myself with some gift money I got recently!

Reflections from the past two weeks…

It’s been a good week for me. The second week of placement.

A good week in the sense that I’ve learnt and am learning lots, and I feel I’m growing too.

My placement is in mental health services and it’s really interesting. I’ve been placed across two parts of the service: community and long-term inpatient. (Those are layperson’s terms for the areas; they have more formal names.)

The work I’m doing is challenging and rewarding. We do what we can do to help the clients engage in treatment, under a model of “least-restrictive practice”, using practice models like the recovery model and others. I’m supporting seriously unwell people, advocating for them and above all, doing my best to keep them safe. They’re really vulnerable because they’re unwell. At higher risk of being a victim of violence and other trauma than they are of being a perpetrator.

It’s challenging; figuring out how to engage with and build rapport with clients, trying to prevent them from coming to harm, supporting their over-stretched families and support networks, as well as dealing with the bureaucracy of funding and resources.

Some days and moments are really hard. This role teaches you about boundaries and self-care, because you can only do good work if you’re taking care of yourself.

You have to become really good at reading someone’s mental state and analysing their risks, which is a skill that develops and is honed over time. But you can only do what you can, as best you can. After a certain point, it’s not up to us but to the clients. We’re working with real people, after all.

That’s what makes it so rewarding. Real people, real personalities. Real stories. It’s things like making the time to start a conversation, finding out what interests them, inviting them to activities you think they’ll enjoy. Taking pleasure in observing positive changes, even small ones, and creating space when people need to talk about things that matter. Advocating for them, while helping them (re)develop skills including the tools for self-advocacy. And more besides.

The next six weeks, like these past two, will be challenging and rewarding. I know I will keep learning and I hope I give something back, too.

In my current mood, this comic panel about life, by Awkward Yeti, speaks to me. Especially the last panel.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Hi there!

Thinking lots of thoughts atm.

One of which is that I ought to schedule some posts for the next few weeks… I don’t like not posting anything but that’s what happens when you’re busy.

I have just finished my first week of placement for my final year of Masters of occupational therapy. It’s in mental health in two different settings and I’m finding it really interesting.

It’s tiring, but I’ll learn lots over the next eight weeks and it’ll be really rewarding.

Let’s see where things go!

[Reblogged] Guest Post: Breaking The Low Mood Cycle

Interesting stuff in the Captain Awkward archives. Reminds me a bit of some of the things (like stress buckets and activity scheduling) we looked at in my mental health subject earlier this year. So I am sharing it and bookmarking it. Check it out.

Also: five days in a row of blogging last week, yay! That is down to scheduling and while I know I can’t always do it, it’s nice when it happens.

via Guest Post: Breaking The Low Mood Cycle

Phew. And that’s a wrap

My last assignment for Paediatrics is due at 17:00 Friday (today). Paediatrics is the final subject of my third year.

In other words, I’m officially DONE with my third year. I’ve been chugging along since the last days of January so that’s nine months. Whew. I get to rest now, until next February when my final year begins. That’s going to involve a lot more placement work and will no doubt be just as intense as this year but in different ways. But until then – huzzah.

This year, I’ve learnt about and built on so many things. Like how to do SMART goals properly and building on intentional communication; environmental modifications, splinting, adaptive equipment, funding etc.; stress buckets, case formulation, intervention planning; stages of development and different treatments for specific disabilities and situations; many many models applicable in general and also specifically to various client groups – aged, disabled/ chronically ill, mentally ill, children…. and so much more.

That’s a long run-on sentence and it’s been a long run-on year.

But so, so good.

I’m really appreciative of all the opportunities that have come my way this year. I think I’ll give myself a few days off to savour them before organising my summer break.

 

On a different note: Don’t forget – today is the final day to get a replacement survey form for the marriage equality survey. Make sure you’ve voted before the end of Friday next week.

 

Busy, busy bee…

Study central around here because I have an exam with oral and written components next week…. I have to present, for ten minutes, an intervention-based session applicable to a particular case scenario I’ve been allocated to.

After the exam’s over, I have to finish writing and submit an assignment about child observation.

I shall have more to say about my Paediatrics OT subject journey after next week.

Until then – this landed in my inbox today. Check it out. I agree – health and arts are linked. After all, treating the whole person is better than just focusing on treating one part; it’s not just about the medical way of things but the social-environmental occupational etc. ways too. https://fromtheharp.co.uk/2017/10/12/a-day-out-at-parliament/

 

OT uni update: busy skill learning

Hi all. This post is currently being written by my left hand on my mobile while my right arm is held captive by the plasma-collection machine at the local blood donation centre. 

I’m two weeks into my last subject for the year: Paediatrics. It’s been really fun. We’ve covered typical and atypical development (including how to hold low/high babies), early childhood interventions, autism, cerebral palsy and interventions and assessment for these plus more generally. These have included sensory processing, family-centred practice, traffic light self-regulation systems, handwriting interventions – and most recently, this interesting intervention called CO-OP: Cognitive Orientation to Occupational Performance. 

It’s a cognition based cooperative approach which enables success (ie skill acquisition) through problem-solving. The OT guides the child to use metacognition strategies and discover the skill(s) for themselves. The child uses their own words to create goals, which are then planned, done and checked (GPDC acronym is used with a toy to help the child remember). 

As part of our learning we each chose a skill to learn using this method in class. So I learnt to KNIT! 

Goal: to be able to knit a row. 

Plan (in my own words): I watched a classmate who knew how to knit demonstrate and talked through the steps, as I saw them, in my own words. Then a third classmate wrote them down. 

(I’m right-handed.) 

1. Right needle goes through the thread on the left needle and then goes to the back. 
2. Loop the thread around the back of right needle only, it does not cross the left needle. 
3. Pull down the thread against the needle with right hand keeping needles crossed at back. 
4. Pull the needle from right hand down 
5. With the left hand turn the needle so the right hand pushes needle through the wool.  
6. With the right hand you move the loop off the left needle while the left hand holds the wool steady.
7. Tighten the knot. 

Or something like that. 

Do: you do the plan. 

Check: has the plan worked? We needed to modify a few steps to ensure everything was clear. 

Finished product:

Not much. But it’s a start. Now I need some wool and knitting needles so I can practice – I borrowed those ones above.

Life Update, number whatever…. :)

Whew.

So I’ve survived my first two days of placement. It’s going well, I think… the plan appears to be to get me out on at least one home visit per day. Today there were two. So I am zonked. Because there’s a lot of write-up to do afterwards, especially if both home visits are with new clients rather than follow-up ones.

It’s rather intense. But fun. I admit, I was a little uncertain of how things would go when I started yesterday. When we’d done class- and assignment-based activities at uni that relate to what I’m doing on placement, it felt kinda boring? Soooo many measurements and so on. (Seriously, one of the things that saved me during the environmental modification assignment was that we could be creative with our query letters….) But out in the field, it’s actually quite fun, or at least interesting. After all, we’re helping real people and hearing their stories.

I got praised today for my clinical reasoning skills, so I must be doing something right!

I get very tired by the end of the day though. All I want to do is go home and “flop”. Well, I did think about and plan to go to fencing tonight, but only remembered at home that I don’t have my runners with me at the moment. Next week!

Now, I should get to what I’ve thought about doing since I got home… writing up posts about my trip, as well as food posts. Then I can get an early night after that.

Check back in later this week, hopefully tomorrow – there is one hell of a good #MIV2018 Update coming. (Six months to go!!!)