Back in the clinic! ClinEd 3 begins!

Today was my first day of my clinical experience at my new placement, which is an out patient clinic that specializes in pulmonary rehab. It was a long one (10 hours!) Big shift from doing acute back to out patient. The clinic is small, but it seems nice. My CI is young (she graduated from the same school as me 3 years ago!) and is actually a year younger than me in age. That doesn't bother me as long as I can learn from her.  The clinic serves about 50% out patient and 50% pulmonary rehab. I'm really excited about the pulmonary rehab aspect.The respiratory therapists work on aerobic conditioning (they work the patients up to 20 minutes on 3 different machines TWICE a visit [2 hours of aerobic work!!!]) then PT works on strengthening, balance and reiterating what the RT's teach (like breathing techniques, energy conservation, etc.) I had forgotten that Medicare Part B does not allow students to provide treatment to patients, so I was a little bummed because a lot of the patients today (especially the pulmonary patients) were Medicare and so I wasn't allowed to treat them. Although, it was nice because I did get to sort of observe and see how things happen. I am just hoping that there will be a good number of non-Medicare patients in the pulmonary rehab program for me to treat, since it was the reason I wanted to come to this clinic. Besides that, the day was ok. I got a little prepping on the computer documentation (which is, of course, a new program than I've dealt with previously) and some more information on billing. My CI had me write down three goals for this experience... I said that I wanted to become comfortable and competent with cardiopulmonary patients in this setting (since I am competent in the acute setting), to become independent with orthopedic patients (again), to become better at time management and multi-tasking, and to continue to excel with documentation. My CI seems very open and told me that I can ask her any questions or if I get overwhelmed or not challenged enough to let her know.  I think I am her first student, so it should be interesting for both of us as this goes.