It is a common belief amongst the physiotherapy community that neurological physiotherapists are strict in their expectation of one's knowledge of the neuroanatomy of the human body. This makes me a little nervous but from conversing with some of my other peers I have heard that the physiotherapy department at Hollywood hospital are very supportive and happy to help facilitate a student's learning.
I expect that my supervisor will want me to have a general knowledge of the neuroanatomy, be able to recognise how it impacts on a patients function and be able to facilitate movement accordingly. I think that I will be working with mainly stroke patients so a knowledge of the types of stroke and the common impairments, activity limitations and participation restrictions will be important. I expect that most of the treatment will be based on improving a patients function by facilitating from various key points of control. Something that I am a bit unsure about is communicating with some of the patients that I will be seeing. A few will have a low level of consciousness and others might have speech disturbances so it will interesting to see how the physiotherapists at Hollywood approach communicating with these types of patients and the types of strategies they use.
Reviewing my neurological units I feel a bit overwhelmed with the amount of knowledge that I need to have going into this placement. Probably a bit more concerning is the need to be able to call on this knowledge when treating a patient and apply it appropriately to help with their rehabilitation. This skill is not something new and is in fact something that every physiotherapist needs to do but I feel that because neurology appears quite complex I think this is going to be a challenge for me. However because I have heard that as far as neurological placements go this is one very enjoyable, it makes me look forward to the challenge rather than be afraid of it.
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