On my current clinical placement I am working with a number of patients who are in the same age group as myself. Many of these patients have the same interests as myself, go to the same social locations and do the same things that I do on the weekend. The issue of working with patients in the same age group was raised during mid-placement assessment. My supervisor was interested in knowing how I was coping with the situation, and the following points were made.
There are several issues to be aware of when working with patients in the same age group as ourselves. The first of these is the importance of avoiding burnout by debriefing with colleagues or the like to ensure we are not taking on too much and keeping things to ourselves. One of the hardest things to cope with on this prac has been realizing that these patients were living the same sort of life as you and me before their accidents, and now they have months and years of hard work ahead in order to regain the slightest normalcy back into their lives. My tutor told me an example about a colleague who didn’t debrief or vent about the things she was dealing with at work in a similar situation each day, and eventually she left the profession because she didn’t identify what was bothering her and burnt out emotionally.
The second issue is being able to be both personal and professional towards these younger patients. That is, we need to be able to build rapport, and connect with our patients to increase things like compliance. However in building rapport, we also need to be able to establish a clear ‘patient-therapist’ relationship, without letting age similarities get in the way. Another student mentioned one lunchtime that she had a patient who acted totally differently around her compared to older members of staff, which is not fair, as we need to be respected as professionals in our field, regardless of age. This is as much our responsibility as it is the patient’s and we need to ensure that there are clear lines in the sand outlining our position and their’s, to ensure that the patients receive the best care possible.
I found this discussion with the supervisor to be very useful, and was glad that she identified these things to me. As therapists, we need to take care of ourselves both mentally and physically, and this experience has highlighted to me the importance of talking things over and debriefing about emotional or stressful situations. In the future I will ensure that I share with colleagues, and talk things through to ensure I do not ‘burn out’. It is also important for us to be aware of our professional standing, and to ensure that we are treated correctly with the right amount of respect from our patients. We’ve worked hard to get where we are, and should be treated as such.
2 comments:
Hey Jess,
its great that your supervisor is also concerned for your welfare. Thanks for bringing up the point about taking care of ourselves and not burning out. I feel that maybe as students that is an area that can bog us down too much. Having not as much experience, it is sometimes hard to tell if you are taking too much upon yourself and not knowing when is approriate to speak up that you are having too much to handle. However, with your post, i think we'll all have that at the back of our mind and hopefully we will never have to experience burn out and continue in this profession!
Risk of burnout is high in first years of profession- having people to talk things over with, as your supervisor suggested, is REALLY important. Thanks for the blog.
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