This past week, I had the opportunity to rotate through two different sites at the hospital.
The first site was the Pre-admission Testing (PAT) unit, where patients are seen before surgery to ensure they are in good health to undergo surgery. The PAT process begins about a month before the patient’s surgery date when nurses contact patients to gather their medical and social history. Questions such as family medical history, smoking frequency, alcohol consumption, and past surgeries are asked to understand the patients’ potential response to anesthesia. Then, once the patient arrives at the PAT appointment, the patient undergoes blood work to determine if it is defined in their blood and an electrocardiogram (EKG) to assess heart function. A nurse practitioner then conducts a mental assessment, asking additional medical history questions and listening to the patient’s heart and lungs. Once the exam is complete, everything is documented, and the blood samples are sent to the lab.
One thing I enjoyed about PAT was that the nurses always had something to do. They were always busy—either assisting patients or delivering lab samples (the nurses mentioned they walk about 4 miles a day doing this!). When there wasn’t an urgent task to attend to, the nurses spent their time calling patients scheduled for surgery or documenting the tasks they completed that day. This taught me so much more about the extensive checks that patients went through before surgery which I didn’t know about before.
The second rotation I experienced was at a pediatric speech and occupational therapy center. Since I already have experience working with children, I felt more comfortable in this setting and could interact with the kids more effectively. Although I had some prior exposure to speech and occupational therapy in nursing homes, working with pediatric patients was completely different. A lot of the times, when the speech therapists were working with the patient, it looked like they were just playing with the patient with a variety of toys. As I began to observe them more though, I realized that through playing with these toys with the patients, they were attempting to get the patient to say certain words or colors that pertained to the games they were playing. I thought this was so interesting as I haven’t ever seen any type of learning like this.
Another aspect I observed was Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy for autistic children. ABA technicians work one on one with a child and use positive reinforcement systems to help children understand the consequences of certain behaviors. For example, when one of the children cleaned up after the mess they made, the ABA technician would allow the child to play with more games or toys. However, if he didn’t clean up his mess, the technician wouldn’t allow the child to grab another toy. The positive reinforcement motivated the child to repeat this desired behavior which is how the technician taught the children certain behaviors.
Between these two rotations, pediatric speech and occupational therapy was my favorite. I found it easier to connect with the kids, making the experience more enjoyable. Regardless, I am still excited about meeting more medical professionals and continuing to explore diverse fields within medicine.
