Almost Done reflections

It feels incredible for most of us to have completed the three major clinical placements. I got up Friday morning and felt excited for the very first time in a long while. Feelings such as excitement and euphoria have been hiding dormant, suppressed by the stress of living under the microscope for far too long. Now it is onto the PCR for Curtin to find that final straw to break our backs. Sorry, I am just dragging things out here.

I was very happy with my last placement being neural. Of all three placements, I feel neural brings out the most Bobby Flynn in all of us. Cardio made me feel like a technician, musculo is where my interest lies and brought out the pragmatic in me, but neural required that I dig deep and quickly develop astute observational skills and a high degree of touch. I had to really feel for patient’s movements (or lack thereof) and reciprocate further movement such that it would achieve the outcome I wanted, almost like a dance. I found that to be as near an art form as anyone can hope for as a physiotherapist. Overall, it was a positive experience.

A correction is also is order. Earlier, I discussed a couple articles that came to the conclusions Bobath techniques were either less or equivalent in effectiveness compared with motor relearning. After using Steve’s methods to analyse the articles, design flaws marred the researching findings. In short, both studies were unable to adequately ensure one group received true expert Bobath or motor relearning approaches. That teaches me to jump to conclusions too quickly, whether it be out of frustration or not.

Thanks for the interesting forum discussions everyone.