Tuesday, April 22, 2014

The Pressure Cooker

And suddenly the semester is finished. There were many times this semester that I thought I wasn't going to make it and that I wasn't cut out to be an SLP. Most of these moments were outside of the therapy room and involved paperwork, but inside of the therapy room, I morphed from a very unsure, anxious-filled student into a more confident, heck-yeah-I-can-do-this clinician. I love doing therapy. I love the fact that I can go in to a session with a plan of action and the ability to modify it on the fly. I love trying to figure out what will help my clients the most and give them support they need while fostering independence.

So, what made this semester so difficult? All of my spare time was devoted to clinic and my clients. My other
classes were on the back burner and often neglected. There is soooo much paperwork that has to be submitted and scrutinized in clinic. Every little step in the process was looked at, analyzed, critiqued, modified, re-modified, and finally approved. There were several times this semester I thought, there is no way I will be able to handle a full caseload if I am struggling to keep up with just 3 clients!! Now I realize, that yes, there will be a lot of paperwork for a full caseload, but it won't be like this. All the little components that go into an assessment or therapy session will be things that we will just do for ourselves and will be a part of our planning. The actual submitted paperwork should be more streamlined, concise, and standardized based on the particular settings requirements. Every little detail will not be scrutinized by someone else. We will not be writing weekly self-reflections. This is something we should always do, but should now be internalized.

At the end of clinic 1 I wrote a post about my top 10 tips for surviving clinic. These all still apply to clinic 2 (and beyond), but I would like to add:

11. Be open to your C.E. coming into the therapy room in the middle of the session and demonstrating techniques for you. Don't take it as "oh-my-God-I'm-doing-this-wrong, this is so embarrassing the client must think I'm incompetent!" This is a learning process and I would rather be shown the correct way or a way to modify technique that isn't quite working. I welcomed this when it happened and appreciated the model.

12. Be organized! Going from 1 client to 3 clients was a shock and I was so disorganized in the beginning of the semester. I had a hard time remembering what I submitted, what needed edits, what was approved... finally I bought a 13-pocket folder for each of my clients and made a "submitted/approved" checklist to help keep me on track. Find what works for you.

13. Be a mentor and a sounding board. We had the unique opportunity this semester to have 1st semester SLP grad students come in, observe us for 2 sessions and then come into the therapy room to work on a goal with our clients. We were able to take on a more mentor/teacher role as well as take a look at how far we've come in this program! This was a great experience and I hope they continue to do this assignment in future classes. Also, be available for clinic 1's! Share what you've learned in this process and be open when you are approached. I tried to always be available for questions and sometimes the questions would make me think of ways to improve what I was doing too!

14. Observe, observe, observe! This semester I took advantage of observing more and I'm glad I did. It's so easy to get focused on just your own clients and only observe when you need to make up a session. Also, don't ask permission to observe a session!! If you think a clinician may be nervous about you observing them, then don't tell them until after the session. You can observe any clinician in clinic because this is a learning environment and it's your right to do so. I always thought it was funny when someone would ask me if it would be okay to observe me!

15. This needs to be said again: talk to your clinic classmates. I don't think I would have survived this semester without these awesome women! Thank you!!

And with that, I say goodbye to clinic.

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