Job Notes

Well I have transitioned to outpatient therapy and it is going well. It is much more laidback than inpatient is. For example, tomorrow I have 4 patients (sessions are 1 hour long) but they are spread out from 8am to 5pm, so I have alot of down time. Usually I am busier, fridays are just kind of slow. My student finished her clinical rotation with me last week. It was a good experience, I would do some things the same and some things differently if I had it to do over again. She was there for 10 weeks and I hope that I was a good supervisor, she was a great student and I felt like that made my job really easy. I had never had a student before, so it was a new experience, but now I am back to flying solo.
Outpatient is different, in the sense that when people are in inpatient, they are just dealing with the trauma of what has happened to them and they don't know what to expect or hope for. But in outpatient, people are living at home and dealing with the day to day effects of their disability. Hence the reason I had two people break down crying in my office this week. That is part of the job, we actually take a counseling class during our masters program for this very reason. Usually I am good at leaving all the emotional part of my job at work, but this week it seems to be sticking with me and wearing me out a bit.
So this is how my caseload stacks up. I have 4 people with aphasia (language problems after a stroke), two people with dysarthria (problems articulating clearly after a stroke), two women with mild traumatic brain injuries (one of which resulted from a roadside bomb in Iraq), a young man with speech and swallow problems resulting from radiation for tongue cancer (he's been on a feeding tube for 6 months), one man with severe aphasia and cognitive issues because his stroke was so massive he had two brain surgeries to stop the bleeding, but his is doing surprisingly better. I had seen this particular man at another hospital when he had just come off the ventilator, then I saw him again in inpatient when he got transferred to my facility and now I am seeing him for outpatient. It's kind of neat to be able to see his progress. And in the last week I discharged one man with Parkinsons, one man with aphasia and who had a laryngectomy (take out your voicebox because of cancer), and one 5 year old kiddo with aspergers.
So that is what I do during the week. Thankfully I have my weekends and wednesdays, since I long to be at home everyday I am at work.
Maybe this weekend I can post about our trip to Utah, it was beautiful and it was so good to seem my sister and good friends. Made me miss my friends terribly.