The End of an Internship
My internship has ended and it was GREAT!!! I have had the wonderful opportunity to work with many health care professionals, but most of all I had the opportunity to work with an excellent CI. She was able to help me grow so much during the course of my internship to the point where I was able to practice with my own caseload.
During this internship I have grown so close to my patients. I worked at an SNF where many of my patients were there for long-term care, so I worked with some of my patients every single day. There were good days and bad days, but all in all I will miss them all so much.
An internship is a great experience very unlike the classroom experience. You never truly put everything together until you are there one-on-one with a patient and their families. You have to make split-second decisions and explain those decisions in a way that can be communicated to the patients as well as the patient's doctors, nurses and support staff.
The patients' and families' dependency on our knowledge is so critical to their perception of the care they received, but I found that the most important thing to them was knowing that their therapist was compassionate to their situation and actually cared about them. This is so critical, especially in a setting where most of the patients feel as though they will never get better.
Something else that I also noticed is how important cultural competency is... but you'll have to wait until next week to hear about that!