Friday 23 November 2012

Reflection: simplicity and change

So, I'm going to detour from the climbing-related posts, albeit only briefly.I am going to defer to my 9-5 NHS work, at a community hospital on the wards.

During this week, the Occupational Therapist (OT) I normally work with on the wards has been off, and so I have been working with several different OT's all week.
During this week, I have picked up 3 key points:
  1. That change is good - it has kept me on my toes this week, and reassured me that I have been doing the right thing with my patients
  2. That all the OT's I've worked with work in a similar way - while everyone is unique and has their own way of working, it's refreshing to see that people have similar traits running through the way they work, such as proactiveness, clinical reasoning and prioritising
  3. That simplicity is often the best, and easiest way -  on this, I will elaborate further:
    As community rehab wards, patient's often get admitted for "confidence building" with regards to their mobility, and I had one such gentleman. I'd never figured out how to quantify "confidence" until an OT this week suggested just using a scale of 1-10 and he can rate his confidence that way - and there you have it, simple yet effective, and best of all, patient-centred!
So there you have it, a brief insight into the other side of my physiotherapy work!