Clinical Assignment Number Due

The entirety of my clinical experience has consisted of outpatient settings. They have provided a lot of opportunity and learning for me, but treating the same orthopedic or sports injuries all day can feel a bit monotonous. I was looking forward to an inpatient assignment (hospital, nursing home, acute care center) this term but was disappointed, initially, when assigned to another orthopedic and sports PT clinic. Luckily, my colleagues reminded me that this affiliation is only 6 weeks, opposed to the next one (definitely an inpatient setting) which is a longer 8 or 12 week term. In other words, it’s better to get the outpatient affil over with now so that I can spend more time leaning in an inpatient clinic later. So I guess it worked out.

I’m about to start day three at my new clinic and so far so good. It’s an orthopedic and sports physical therapy clinic in Grand Central so it’s very busy and close to home. Seven minutes and the seven train is all I need to get to work! J.  My clinical instructor, a Doctor of Physical Therapy, is very open to questions and tries to teach me things when he can. There are DPT’s, PT’s, PT assistants, athletic trainers, and PT aides employed by the clinic so I’m getting to see a little bit of everything.

Other than the location, another perk to my new job is that it’s on the top floor of one of the nicest gyms in the city. I was working out at the school’s gym until Jen got me a two week guest pass to her New York Sports Club on Wall St. Well not I’ve been upgraded again, this time to Equinox Grand Central. All employees of the clinic get to work out there for free so I took advantage of that yesterday after work. It might be the nicest gym I’ve ever been in. Even better than FSU’s Leach Center, I hate to admit.

So yah, so far so good, although the days have been going by at a snail’s pace. I was told I’ll start working with patients on my own this week which should help the next six weeks be more bearable. 

P.S. There seems to be some kind of bug in blogger.com that's causing random highlighting in blog posts. Hope it doesn't happen again on this one!