Musings of an unconventional OT student

This week’s blog is going to be about me reflecting on my assessment and treatment skills in psychosocial block thus far. It has been approximately 3 weeks of prac and I have had the chance to assess and treat 2 patients in that time. I have noticed difficulties in both these aspects, especially in the psychosocial setting as treating a mental illness is very abstract. It can’t be seen or touched so a lot of assessment findings are observation based and there needs to be a certain degree of patient participation to be able to do assessments. This is particularly difficult with mentally ill patients due to the lack of insight, or in other words, them believing they do not have a mental illness. Obviously people who think they have no mental illness don’t understand why they are in hospital, don’t want to take medication that stabilises them and often don’t want to work with the OT or any therapist because they think it is a waste of time. Herein lies the challenge of assessment an...

As with every occupation, there comes lessons that need to be learnt, exams that need to written and practical’s that need to be attended and assessed. But before all this can happen, you need to learn the content, memorise it until it becomes knowledge that you can access at any point of the day. As an OT student, most of this knowledge comes about through practice, but another part comes largely through expanding on the notes given in class by reading. Reading textbooks, reading articles, just READING. To say I enjoy this aspect would be a complete lie. Reading, yes, reading articles… not so much. So with today’s topic of critiquing an article that has added value to my OT journey, I really needed to search. Do I look for something knowledge based or emotion based? Something clinical or something motivational? Instead I found some more meaning to add to my OT journey and possibly even a new passion. As I have come through the last 2 and a half years, I have become quite s...

I know. What a way to start the first blog for third year psychosocial block. How am I already tired and it’s only been 4 weeks and 2 practical days? Let’s just say that this psychosocial practical block has brought back a lot of suppressed problems and insecurities form last semester’s physical prac, as well as come with its own new challenges that has caused some upset in my very fragile, easily unbalanced psyche.   I lost a lot of self-confidence during the course of last semester’s physical practical. As you can imagine, after spending nearly 2 and a half years in a degree, to then be told you don’t have the skills to be an OT, can really have an enormous impact on your self-confidence. It makes you question all your decisions, your ability and worth as a student therapist, and in my case, contemplating a degree change because if I can’t help my clients, what am I doing here? But I made it, so I subconsciously swept all the difficulties and stress, the insecurities and ...