Clinical Ed
Nov. 18th, 2004 06:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninevirtuesSo, my orthopedic clinical will take place at a chronic pain spine clinic. The CI is great, and I'll learn a lot. But... I will have zero experience with arms and legs-- no knees, ankles, shoulders, wrists, or elbows. I need that.
Accordingly, I want to do my final internship in an orthopedic and sports clinic. BUT.... the clinical ed director, who I have privately dubbed the "NO" lady, insists that no, we must have twelve weeks of acute care experience and 12 weeks of rehab experience. I can have more orthopedic experience if I slip it in with one of those, so of course I want to do the rehabilitation requirement on my neuro clinical, right?
No.
Acute care involves taking people who have just had surgery, getting them up, and walking them around while they're heavily medicated. You go home at the end of the day smelling like the diapers you've changed. You end up lifting heavy floppy people who don't help you. You get cursed in multiple foreign languages, because your appearance means patient pain. You work weekends. This is not a good deal. Trained monkeys could do it. They could work in the ICU, too, as long as they know the time honored "crimp the spurting arterial line and yell for help" technique.
Did I mention that acute care therapists have an extremely high burnout rate? And that clinicals sometimes don't work out like you hope-- the CI is nasty, or the spot does not involve working with the population or in the setting you thought it did...?
Accordingly, there is no way in hell I want to risk getting stuck in acute care for six months. So. If I march up to the No Lady and tell her that I don't want to do acute care and I want to get it out of the way expediently, because it's monkey work, she'll fight me on it. On the other hand, she very much wants to facilitate our professional interests. So: I apply a modicum of guile to the situation, and tell her that I find acute stroke patients very interesting, and that's the population I really want to work with.
Result: Acute care obligation... done and done. That's the plan, anyway.
Accordingly, I want to do my final internship in an orthopedic and sports clinic. BUT.... the clinical ed director, who I have privately dubbed the "NO" lady, insists that no, we must have twelve weeks of acute care experience and 12 weeks of rehab experience. I can have more orthopedic experience if I slip it in with one of those, so of course I want to do the rehabilitation requirement on my neuro clinical, right?
No.
Acute care involves taking people who have just had surgery, getting them up, and walking them around while they're heavily medicated. You go home at the end of the day smelling like the diapers you've changed. You end up lifting heavy floppy people who don't help you. You get cursed in multiple foreign languages, because your appearance means patient pain. You work weekends. This is not a good deal. Trained monkeys could do it. They could work in the ICU, too, as long as they know the time honored "crimp the spurting arterial line and yell for help" technique.
Did I mention that acute care therapists have an extremely high burnout rate? And that clinicals sometimes don't work out like you hope-- the CI is nasty, or the spot does not involve working with the population or in the setting you thought it did...?
Accordingly, there is no way in hell I want to risk getting stuck in acute care for six months. So. If I march up to the No Lady and tell her that I don't want to do acute care and I want to get it out of the way expediently, because it's monkey work, she'll fight me on it. On the other hand, she very much wants to facilitate our professional interests. So: I apply a modicum of guile to the situation, and tell her that I find acute stroke patients very interesting, and that's the population I really want to work with.
Result: Acute care obligation... done and done. That's the plan, anyway.
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-19 02:38 am (UTC)Or, to put it more harshly, they're more concerned w/ squeezing slave labor out of you than they are in seeing you educated. :-(
Well, no, but good guess.
Date: 2004-11-19 03:54 am (UTC)Here's the deal: The people who contemplate becoming physical therapists (and pony up three years of their lives and a bunch of tuition to accomplish that) are athletes who want a career in athletics, but who don't want to become PE teachers or athletic trainers. And, naturally, all these people want to work in outpatient orthopedics with athletes like themselves. (As does 70% of my class.)
The problem with that, is that outpatient orthopedics is only one part of the job market for PTs. There's also rehab and also acute care. The faculty hopes that you will get exposed to one of these, discover that there's more to PT than you knew about, and decide you like it. (This has actually happened to me; I like wound care, and I NEVER thought I would like that. I'm a bike racer, though, and wound care has obvious applications to road rash.)
In any case, it's common for the outpatient orthopedic PTs that I know to also work in acute care part time (Like one weekend per month, or every other weekend). And, if I desperately needed or wanted extra money, I could do that.