Final Entry at Carinya

Final Entry

I really enjoyed my 5 weeks at Carinya. I was correct about some of the assumptions and expectations I had at the start of placement. Carinya is a slow-stream rehabilitation place. It is a transitional care service. Clients can stay for the twelve week program before going home or into care.

I was expected to do a lot of rehab with my clients. Treatment was very focused on functionality and I did have to do some discharge planning (but not nearly as much as I expected). This could partly be due to the act only one of my clients was discharged in the time I was there. A lot of the discharge planning seems to be done by the social working. At first I had difficulty on prioritizing my client’s problem list, and I was not sure of what were the most functional tasks to focus on. My supervisor said this came with experience, but I do believe I was better at it by the end of the placement.

The staff were very supportive. I mainly worked with the two physios, the physio assistant and the occupational therapy assistant. I was giving my own caseload. I started with a few clients and quickly built up to 7 or 8 clients per day. I felt I managed this really well, as I was organized and prepared for each day. I had to manage my time carefully or I would not have been able to fit all my clients in each day. As we did not have set session times with the clients, it was sometime difficult getting them at a good time for a session. We had to fit in with meals, showers, group therapy sessions, visitors etc. To start with I felt bad about taking the client for a session while they had visitors, but this made my day difficult when I couldn’t fit all my clients in. By the end of the first week or so I was interrupting visits and other agendas to take a client to physio (which was more important). Most of the visitors were very understanding and were happy to wait, or even watch the session.

One of my jobs was to run the daily group exercise session. It was a general rehab class and all clients were expected to attend. I ran it every Wednesday and Damien did it on Fridays. The physiotherapy assistant and occupational therapy assistant ran it on other days.

My role was not quite what I expected. I did not have to attend as many meetings as I expected (however the physio had to attend a weekly meeting). I did a lot of one-on-one rehab sessions with clients (as I had expected). I also had the job of assessing any new clients I was given, but the assessment forms were supplied to it was an easy assessment to perform. I was made aware of just how important goals are, as is tracking progress. We used a number of outcome measures (including the BERG, TUG, GOWLAND) to see if out clients were improving. It was also a good motivation tactic with clients.

While most of my expectations were met, I would have liked to have seen more neuro clients with different conditions. I mainly saw clients were had suffered from strokes (and the rest were post-fractures and not neurology related). There wasn’t much variety of neuro conditions, and the one client with Parkinson’s was admitted the day before I left, so I didn’t get to spend much time with them. I was a bit disappointed.

Any concerns I had at the start of prac were put to red in the first few days of placement. There was an MDT at Carinya, and I did work within that. I did get lost at the facility a number of times, and while I was better by the end of the 5 weeks, I still had trouble finding my way around sometimes.

I learnt two very important things while on placement at Carinya, that will stick with me and help me out in future pracs. Firstly, setting goals with the clients (both short term and long term) is a very important part of the treatment process. It gives them something to work towards, it lets them know what to expect, it motivates them and lets them know when they have achieved something in their rehab journey. The other thing I learnt is to focus on functionality. The top priority in treating the client is to ensure they are functional and have the best quality of life possible.