Pushing Kids

My last placement was in paediatrics and although I my clinical area was orthopaedics, I was also fortunate enough to treat a plastics patient with an extensive de-gloving injury to their posterior calf and thigh pre- grafting. My main feedback that was given at the end of my placement was that I didn’t push the child enough during my therapy sessions.

I have taken this on board completely, but I also found it interesting as this was my first ever plastics patient that I was treating and since it is such a specialised area, which is covered by relatively few lectures with minimal clinical application, I just found it hard to apply what I had learnt in uni to my patient because I basically felt unprepared or ill- equipped in my knowledge base in this area to provide a treatment expected of that as a PT working in this area.

It was a minor criticism but still, if I had another patient with similar presentation I think I would still be in the same position just due to my/ our sheer lack of clinical experience. Has anyone else experienced a similar situation in which expectations seemed relatively greater than what you had initially expected, especially if you have had to take on cases that are very unfamiliar to you, and what have you done to manage this situation?

I think I could have managed the situation better by talking more with my supervisors about how I felt treating this patient, and that I didn’t feel completely confident running the show with such a specialised case.