As we complete one placement and about to start another, has anyone ever wondered how this affects our patients. Similar to other placements, the musculo outpatient clinic at Charles is a student run clinic. Every four weeks our patients get a completely new student and basically have to start all over again. With some patients you build an amazing rapport with them and rehab is going wonders for them until suddenly we tell them that a new student will be taking over next week.
I had this conversation with a few of my patients this week. One patient said that he didn't mind it now that he was in the later stages of the rehab but it was difficult in the early stages of his ACL rehab. He would get use to one student and then this new student would come in and they have to do an entire whole objective assessment again. He would that quite annoying sometimes, especially if the new student was very hesistant and unsure of themselves initially.
In general though, the more "veteran" patients simply got use to the system and have come to accept it. My new patients have informed me of their reluctancy to see a new student next week. One new private patient mentioned that she decided to come here because it was cheaper and she knew that us students would take the time and effort to "get it right". Also because there was a supervisor to ensure that. But now that we're switching placements, she's not as keen on it anymore.
It brings up the question of whether or not student run clinics are in the best interest of the patients. The question isn't whether or not the patients are getting the appropriate treatment, but whether or not continuity of therapist affects improvement rate/patient rehab.
When we were distributing our patients to the next lot of students, my supervisor mentioned to my fellow colleague that she should handover her patient to whoever she felt would gel with her best as she has some bad experiences with physio.
What happens if one student's personality and approach is completely different from the next student's?? Something to think about....or maybe I'm just a little possessive of my patients.
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Seems like this is a problem everywhere, at shents, the patients are so used to it that they know when the current batch of us are leaving and when to expect to new batch of students. However, they tend not to complain too much..maybe cos they are not as demanding as musculo outpatients..?
Perhaps whats really impt is to document our treatment sessions/assessments well and include a good transfer summary, so then the next student will know how to continue from there? Therefore, they would not need to go thru the entire assessment procedure, allowing them to focus on selective objective assessments..
Maybe it would be good to let the patient know right from the 1st session how long we wld be seeing them and what the procedure is like... besides, if they r getting subsidised treatment (this i am assuming), they cant expect too much can they?
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