Final Entry: Placement 3 2010

Reflecting back on my initial entry it's clear that I was quite concerned about how I would go working with kids but after being on this placement I feel that should I need to work with kids in the future I'd be reasonably confident. I took me a couple of weeks to really become comfortable playing games, making child sounds and generally interacting with the kids but once i realised you really can't worry about what you look like it seem to be a lot easier!

I thought at the start of placement that I wouldn't have as much hands on experience as my other placements and this did turn out to be the case. However, it was not necessarily because I was working with the kids and that the parents were uncomfortable with me doing so but rather because of the model of care that Disability Services Commission offer. Part of the model is that each chid has a key contact that attends most of the home visits regardless of the purpose of the visit. So in some circumstances I was attending visits with my supervisor, who was the key contact for the child, to trial a wheelchair or view mealtimes where hands on physiotherapy was not required. A positive was that I learned a lot about other allied health professionals and was exposed to different ways of thinking when treating a child.

Knowing a child's developmental milestones did turn out to be beneficial but I guess I did most of my learning on the placement. As I was seeing a lot of children with Down Syndrome it was probably more important to know the typical milestones for a child with such a condition and fortunately the commission had a lot of information on this topic. Knowing normal posture and patterns of transition was a priority and having an idea of basic handling techniques was preferred. Having a creative and enthusiastic nature was also a necessity!

Something that was an expectation was to have the ability build rapport with the child and the family. This was sometimes more difficult because I might have only seen a family once but it meant that you had have a good nature from day one. I think it was easy to build rapport with the family when you were engaging with their child and showed a general interest in the child's development. It was almost like if you demonstrated this the families trust and respect for you as a physiotherapist followed. So looking back at my initial inclinations that I would cross families that weren't happy with me working with there child, I think I was wrong.

Overall I did enjoy the challenge of working with kids. I had a lot of fun and found that I learned a lot about observing movement patterns, facilitating movement and family centred practice.