Last week, my classmates and I were sent off in pairs on field trips to local hospitals and clinics. While we’ve been on fieldtrips before, usually we’re just there to observe the therapist and hopefully witness something we’ve heard about in class. This time, however, ahead of us being sent into our first clinical internships in three weeks, we were encouraged to participate in the sessions.
I realized that aside from placing hotpacks as an aide before I started school, (which doesn’t really count), this was my first time every laying my hands on a real patient. I got to take blood pressure, measure range of motion, deliver soft tissue massage on a healing surgical scar, and provide assistance during a therapeutic exercise on two different patients.
Compared to what an actual PT does on a daily basis, it wasn’t much, but to my fresh hands, it was absolutely thrilling! After over a year of hearing about things in class and practicing them on my healthy classmates, it was a whole new experience working with actual patients whose blood pressure was high, joints had limited range of motion, scars had pain, and balance was impaired. Although I have always known that I will be able to help people as a PT, practicing on people who actually needed that help made it all the more real.
It also brought home the fact that providing physical therapy is something I’m actually going to be able to do soon. Everything I saw during the three hours of the trip was something I know I should be able to do, especially with the guidance and supervision I’ll have during my first affiliation. From the evaluation I watched to the ther-ex being performed to the soft tissue massage, I realized that everything I saw was based off of things I’ve been busy learning. At no point did my classmate and I turn to each other and say, “What are they doing right now?” or, “I couldn’t do that.”
It’s always great to have more proof that everything we’re learning is for a reason, and the trip also helped calm my pre-internship nerves a bit. I saw that not knowing how to do something, or not be able to do something well, isn’t actually a big deal. When I struggled to take a patient’s blood pressure, the therapist supervising me simply gave me a little advice. With that, I was able to correctly do it, and that was it. No commotion, or anything. I got the tip I needed and continued what I was doing successfully. Similarly, if I forget something in the clinic, my CI will simply give me the reminder I need, I’ll learn from it, and grow as a physical therapist. No one’s expecting perfection from a second-year student, and not knowing something isn’t cause for alarm.
At the end of the morning, one of the receptionists sent us off with a saying I know I’ll remember when I start my internship in a few weeks: “Good luck. Go forth and heal!”