Studying for the NPTE: My Plan

So, I've decided upon a plan to study for the NPTE and figured I would share it here... I am not sure if this plan will work, but it's what I'm going to try to do.

I have 6 weeks until test day and plan to allot my time as follows:

Day 1 - 12: Neuro (my weakest topic) (two days will taken off for baking holiday cookies and Christmas Day!)
Day 13: Practice Exam 1
Day 14 - 20: Cardiopulmonary
Day 21: Practice Exam 2
Day 22 - 28: Start Musculoskeletal
Day 29: Practice Exam 3
Day 30 - 36: Finish Musculoskeletal
Day 37: Practice Exam 4
Day 38 - 41: Review weaknesses and other small topics
Day 42: Exam Day

I'm hoping by starting with my weakest subject that I will spend the most time with it and then ending with musculoskeletal will help have the most things in my memory right before test day.

We shall see what happens!

Time to study for the NPTE

Well, now that graduation day is over, it's time to seriously start planning how I'm going to study for the NPTE. I have the TherapyEd course books and plan on using them as my main means to study. I have a classmate that I am planning on studying with from now until test date; hoping we can keep each other motivated.

My rough draft plan is to start with my weakest subject, which is neuro, then move into cardiopulmonary and finish up with musculoskeletal. Although musculoskeletal is the largest section I hope that studying it closer to the test date will help me remember more.

I feel like I didn't really get to celebrate graduation all that much because this test is looming over me. But, I'm also ready to buckle down and get this very last thing done and over with!

The Day I Got My Doctorate

(below is the speech I proudly gave to my fellow classmates, professors, family and friends on graduation day)

Wow, graduation day. I know for myself and the rest of my classmates, we’ve all had moments when we thought this day would never come. It’s been a long journey. While I was thinking about my experience through PT school, I thought about how each of us has encountered countless highs and lows. Obviously, today is the highest high we’ve had yet, probably being surpassed only by the day when we proudly hold onto our licenses. And we aren’t the only ones who have experienced the ups and downs leading to graduation- I know that our families and friends have been beside us through the good and bad. And, they are all sitting here today, ready to celebrate.
When I was trying to find the right thing to say, I came across these words by Nelson Mandela that perfectly describes the journey of PT School. He said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
Mendela’s statement resonates so well, because everyone in this room knows that PT school is not all roses and rainbows. In fact, it’s more like practicals and playing Jeopardy with Dr. Schreiber. The low points happened to everyone, but occurred at different times - things like waiting until the last minute to do our PBL, working endlessly on the matrix,  our blunders on exams, our mistakes during practical- These were all moments for each of us that made PT school seem impossible.
But, for every low, there was inevitably a high. And, so I’d like to remind us of the good times-- things like: remembering the day we got accepted into PT school, the lifelong friends we’ve all made, the first time we aced an exam, our first clinical and our last clinical—these are all moments that made the journey worth it. These moments were when we stood proud, and we said to ourselves, “We can do this.”
And so, we had different personal journeys through school and each one of us has specific events in the past two and a half years that are etched into our memories as the highs and lows. But even though we’ve all had unique experiences, we made it here together today.
So now, I stand proudly in front of my classmates, my fellow doctors of physical therapy, our wonderful professors, our loving families and friends - and I can say- we did it. It doesn’t seem that impossible after all. Congratulations to the Class of 2013!

How did 8 weeks pass by so quickly?!

  This week has been so busy and has been going very slowly. I am thankful, though because it's my last week and I'm not ready to go! I discharged another patient this week, but all the other ones I started saying goodbye to today. Some of them I am really close to because I started treating them as soon as I started and I will miss not getting to know how they finish up. I had a couple of my male patients tell me how much they appreciated my kindness and how much they will miss me.  The same patient that brought me flowers last week told me I took "care of him best". It was so cute! I am really going to miss everyone. I'm not looking forward to saying goodbye to all my pulmonary patients tomorrow, they have been the ones I have had the most fun with! 

     Today I gave my in-service on CHF. It went pretty well and then we all had lunch together for my "farewell" which was really nice. My CI even bought me a cookie cake! Everyone just keeps hugging me and telling me about how much they don't want me to leave. I really feel like I'm a part of their family now! 

     And, we talked a bit about the possibility of maybe me having a job there when I graduate... It's very unofficial now because they weren't planning on hiring anyone, but it was really exciting to think that I may have a small lead on something already! 

     This has been a really rewarding clinical experience and I have really loved the chance to work with cardiac and pulmonary patients. I will definitely miss it!

Friday the 13th! No wonder things have been "off"

This week has been a little rough with my CI coming back from vacation. I was used to my expectations from her and then got used to the expectations of me by everyone else while she was gone and now she's back and it's been a transition. She's been commenting on everything that I do, or what order I should do particular things. (Like, "Make sure you put patient 1 on the treadmill so you can finish patient 2's manual!") I know she's just trying to be helpful, but I've got it under control! ;) Well... for the most part. 

Well, after two really rough days, today was GREAT! :) :) I was so glad to have a good day. I had a couple of rough ones and was feeling down. One of my pulmonary patient's perked me up right away in the morning. The respiratory therapist will bring donuts in periodically for the patients on Fridays and there were some donuts on the table. My patient looked at the donuts and looked at me and said, "Sister... in the game of life you've got to keep your eye on the donut and not the hole." It made me laugh and made me realize that I was worrying over two "bad" days and really, I've been doing really well overall at this clinical. Then, we got a patient with congestive heart failure and he is high risk for exercise (his cardiologist sent him to us!) so I have been working with him. Basically, we do a functional activity (like stairs) and then I take his pulse and blood pressure. Then we will do another activity, then vitals, and back and forth for the whole session. So, it's a lot of work just to make sure he is doing well. Beyond his congestive heart failure, this patient has a long psychiatric history including paranoid schizophrenic. I was able to sort of teach everyone a few tips on dealing with him based on one of our lecture's from neuro, which was awesome!  Basically, I just make sure I fully explain everything we are going to do and what we are doing and why we are doing it. His therapy session is very structured and I make sure to not whisper around him (we do try to discuss his vitals to the side from time to time). So, if we do have to discuss something, I always come back and tell him what we are talking about, so that he doesn't feel paranoid and feels safe. So far, everything has been fine and he is actually one of my favorite patients (and the source of my in-service)! After he left today, my CI told me she was really impressed with how I was handling him and that I was doing really well with him. That made me feel good! And then, my patient at the end of the day, who is a little hard to warm up, told me she thought I was really empathetic and she can tell how much I care about her and my other patients and that I've been very patient and kind to her and she thinks I will be a great therapist! It made me feel awesome!! Especially after a couple crappy days!! Finally! A good day and I'm feeling great again!

Gettin' the hang of things...

 Another week down! It's been a transition to get back into out-patient after acute care. I'm not used to juggling patients, but I'm already starting to get better at handling more than one patient at a time. On Tuesday my CI left for Australia and she will be gone for almost 2 weeks! I'll be a completely different student when she gets back. In the meantime, I get to work with the owner and the other clinician, which will be nice. They both have more experience and so it has been good to get input on things. On Thursday morning the owner was filling in and I ended up seeing almost all the patients in the morning. I'm not sure if he did it on purpose to see if I could handle multi-tasking, or if it was because he isn't familiar with everyone. I think I did pretty well with trying to keep multiple people going at once. But, like I said, it's a transition from being in acute care and seeing one patient at a time. It's been a source of stress for me and I'm beginning to feel like I'm never going to get the hang of it again!

     I also got to spend some time with the respiratory therapist to see how she works her half of the pulmonary rehab. This has been really cool. I have gotten to sit in and help with two evaluations so far. It's really neat to see how they use the 6 minute walk test to determine how to start an exercise prescription for a patient. Although, they do the walk test on the treadmill, which is sort of odd. The clinic also got a new telemetry unit on Thursday afternoon and only myself and the owner were there to learn how to use it, so on Friday when the owner wasn't in the office, I got to teach the respiratory therapist how to use her new system. 

     Another neat thing that's going on while my CI is on vacation is that some professors from my school are filling in!  It was nice to see one of my professors in the clinic. He's really good with patients. I hope that when he is in on Wednesday he will get to see me work with more patients and see how much I've grown as a therapist. (I was with the respiratory therapist for most of the day on Friday, so I didn't get to work much on the "PT side" as I was helping with aerobic exercise and vitals!) And next week two other professors will be coming in as well. This is the first clinic I've been in that has had a relationship with the professors at my school and it's so nice to see my professors with their clinician hats on!

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.