And we call ourselves "professionals"??

Today we were finally able to conduct our first home visits which was very exciting. It felt to me that going into these people’s homes was a way in which to step inside these people’s lives and actually begin to understand. The second home into which we entered was a step into 'the real world'if i can call it that… Let’s name the lady from this house Katy…

The depression in Katy’s household greeted us at the doorstep. Katy, a middle aged lady is severely ill with cancer which has spread through her breasts; lungs and is now progressing into her spine. She had an appointment booked in February to see the Oncologist however she fell days before her appointment and fractured her hip and so was physically unable to get to her appointment. Her husband phoned to tell them that they would not be able to make the appointment and requested that they be given another date. In his words they were then ‘punished because they had missed their appointment and so were given another appointment two months later for the 29^th of April’ which was yesterday. Yesterday Katy’s husband got her up and ready to go to the hospital, they paid ridiculously over-priced transport to get to the hospital only to be told when they arrived that the Oncologist was not in today. Nobody phoned them to tell them not to come. And as if that wasn’t bad enough they were then given another appointment for the 24^th June, another two long months away. So the question is now who is punishing that Oncologist for not holding up her end of the deal? How many people had made their way to that hospital yesterday, paid all the money they had for the month for transport to get there only to be told sorry come back in two months’ time. It makes me feel sick to think that we as health professionals can behave in that way because I know for a fact that that Oncologist is not the only one. And when our clients don’t attend therapy we get angry and wonder why? Because this is the message that we as health professionals are sending out, why should they care if we don’t? We do not deserve to be called “professionals” if this is how we behave….

And there Katy sat in front of us with cancer literally consuming her body as we spoke. What if June is too late? Here was a husband so dedicated to get his wife better, he’d given up majority of his work so that he can take care of her. I felt embarrassed and ashamed hearing what they told us and I’m sure that running through her mind were negative thoughts of us “therapists” and if we were really even going to help her.

I know this is what happens every day in this country but today it became real for me. I have flu and I see the doctor a day later, Katy has cancer and has to wait four months. I know I cannot save the world but if anything I know I will never let myself be that kind of health professional.

I’m beginning to think some health “professionals” need to get a degree in humanity because it seems like they’ve lost theirs somewhere along the way. 

Aaaand we're on our way

So one week down in the community already and it feels as though we’ve been busy busy busy but what have we actually achieved so far? Well um not much to be honest besides admin work and meetings. That’s what it feels like anyway but reflecting back on the week we have learnt a lot of valuable lessons already. This is what I’ve learnt in 4 days:

1.       The importance of immersing yourself into the community in which you will do work- we have spent a lot of our time this week walking around meeting people; introducing ourselves; getting to know the roles of some of the individuals in the community and really just saying hey what is this community all about and what’s going on here. Ideally to really get to know your community will take alllooooot of time but unfortunately we only have six weeks in Mariannridge so our time to do this is severely limited but hey I guess this will be a continuous process throughout our time spent there

2.       It’s all about the community members, NOT US and what we want! After all we are the outsiders- as therapists we are all used to working in hospitals were quite honestly what the therapists want to do and when they want to do it is what the client will do and when they will do it. But not in the community as we realised. We are required to do home visits to individuals houses as a team of therapists (speech therapists; audio’s and OT’s) along with the CCG’s (community care givers) who take us along to all the houses. So we went to the CCG’s this week ready to do our home visits with them but to our horror they told us we could only start with home visits next week as the client’s had been informed that this is when we are coming to them and so they will not be ready for us this week. This upset us greatly as we only have two days together as a full team as next week has a public holiday and the following week we have to present our clients to our supervisors as part of our formal assessment. So in our minds we HAD to go to their house this week no matter what. But then we sat back and thought about it. We are going into their homes and are offering a service to them- surely they have the right to say when it suits them to allow us in and when they would like to receive the treatment we want to give them. The answer is not to just go and force ourselves on these clients because hey we giving them a free service they need. No the answer is the presentations can wait, we will go when they want us to go.

3.       Nothing is instant- so a lot of our time this week has been spent meeting with people to propose work and projects we would like to begin in various areas in the community. Even though we have had these meetings there is still a lot of groundwork to be done before these projects will actually begin to happen. It has been frustrating me so much because I feel like we doing all this stuff but getting nowhere. But actually I’ve realised now that the groundwork is probably the most important stage of all our work in the community. Starting that process; creating those networks; digging out those paths is the real work- actually doing the stuff in the end is the easy part.

4.       Bonding with our team- its funny to think that we have all been on the same campus, actually been in endless amounts of lectures together for the last three years and still we do not know a single thing about each other and what work each of us does. Im referring to the speech therapist and audiologists here who are part of our team in the community. We spent part of our morning on Thursday with the audiologists who were performing hearing tests on the grade one students (we ended up here mainly as a result of not being able to do our home visits but lets just pretend we had always planned on going there) we got chatting with all of them and eventually they actually invited us to do some of the testing on the students that they were doing. WOW it was amazing and such good fun. At first we felt a bit guilty that we had ‘wasted time’ but no we had not. We had already formed such a bond with them and we got talking about our work and what they have been doing in the community- we shared experiences and we told them about our projects that we had plans for in the community. They showed so much interest in us because we had shown interest in them and as a result they are now contributing to many of our projects. Yes we could’ve sent them a message- told them what we were doing on whatever day and asked them to join in but the result would’ve been that they wouldn’t have shown any interest in our work. But because we made the effort, created those NETWORKS and RELATIONSHIPS they wanted to reciprocate. Just getting an understanding of their work and what they do made it so easy for us to see where they could contribute to the work we are planning on doing. And honestly the more the merrier right? Who wants to do all the work anyway

So what can I say but there are exciting things to come in the next few weeks and these definitely are not the end of the lessons I will be learning J

EXPECTATIONS...

Today was our first day in the community of Mariannridge. Waking up this morning I didn’t know what to expect but for the first time ever I felt a sense of peace on the first day of prac. We climbed out the bus in Mariannridge and walked towards Ridge Café and the MCC (Mariannridge community council) offices. Nobody was there waiting for us. Everyone just carried on around us like we were invisible…. This is somewhat different to what has been happening the last few years were we are met by an OT or someone who is in charge at the hospital or wherever we doing our prac and our supervisor is there asking us questions and laying out the expectations. Quite the opposite of what happened this morning. At that moment I felt lost and wasn’t sure what to do, but after some time we ‘forced’ ourselves in by going and introducing ourselves to whoever was around and taking a walk up to the school and getting involved with the groups that were running. When I was driving home this afternoon I started thinking about what had happened this morning. We are so used to structure and being told what we must do. We have always known what our supervisors and clients are expecting from us. But I don’t believe community block is not going to be like that. We have to look for things now. It’s not clear cut, there are no ‘specified’ roles for an OT in a community. It’s up to us to find our role and not only do we need to find it but we need to find a way to fill those roles too. It’s going to take one heap load of confidence and trust in myself something that has been my downfall during my three years of studies thus far. So then I asked myself why am I not nervous and worried if this block is asking of me something that I lack? The only thing that I could put it down to is that the expectations and pressure now in this block are no longer coming from our supervisors that greet us at the door on our first day. This block to me has no academic pressure…... It has real pressure, it has people pressure- how can I help these people? What do they need? What can I give them? What’s going on in this community? And that’s the pressure that drives me because I care about and love people more than anything in this world. I’m tired of academics. I’m ready to just be a human being and use myself as a resource.