Week 3, Day 2, Geriatric Inpatient Psych, Level II OT fieldwork

So I don’t feel like blogging tonight. Maybe it’s because I just found out that Karen the Rooster is DEAD. My friends Paul & Angela who owned Karen the rooster (he started out life as a girl, or okay, he was supposed to be a girl, SURPRISE), anyway, they KILLED HIM so that a friend could EAT HIM.

But really, that’s just a disturbing blip in the radar, not necessarily the reason I don’t want to blog. But I know if I don’t, by tomorrow the new day will erase today and I’ll have lost all my stories of the day.

Let’s say. Today I got 20 productivity units and wrote um, at least 15 notes. 2 evals, 4 cogs, 1 ADL, 8 group notes, etc.

Abbreviations I’m about to use a thousand times explained quick and dirty and possibly slightly wrongly:

MMSE, Mini Mental State Exam: common questionnaire for dementia
ACL: Allen’s Cognitive Levels, used to determine how much cognitive assistance a person needs
LACLS: a leather lacing task to test cognitive levels, related to ACL

My supervisor had an empty morning so was with me 8am-11am.

First: did MMSE/LACLS on a man who is very low level, just to confirm he is too low level for OT (at least for our purposes in this particular ward, nobody is too low level for OT), with documented proof, so we can discharge him.
Second: Gave a newly-frequent-flier lady a shower. My first time. I stood in the shower with her – her on a shower chair – and was in charge of the hand held attachment. She is graded
on her bathing/dressing using cognitive levels. For example she perseverated on certain areas and forgot to deal with others until cued. Man, elderly diabetics tend to have really scary feet.
Third: Did an eval. Lady slow to process, very depressed. Didn’t particularly care but was cooperative.
Fourth: Watched my OT run a group on self-care using a Self-Care modified Bingo.
Fifth: Ran my group on importance of exercise as important component to healthy lifestyle – not in those words. Did chair exercises.
Sixth: Oh lordie, I’m forgetting.

We discharged one lady because she would ALWAYS sleep – and then an hour later, I go up and she is sitting there, bored in the hallway, wanting something to read. guess if she is awake again tomorrow, we’ll re-instate her.

I did another eval on a lady who, apparently, pre-hospital, would try to get the plastic off food by using a lighter, lol. She apparently told this one aide
who she finds particularly pushy, “Go away, you bitch”…….which isn’t so bad. I mean, in the sense that sometimes they REALLY curse you out. One curse word is like, nothing, lol.

Some of these ladies seem pretty calm and cooperative and high-functioning and I’m like, hmm, do they really belong here?And then I stick around on the ward and start to hear them scream and cry and I’m like um, yes, I guess so, lol. Although truthfully I think a stay in a psychiatric ward could make someone a little crazy get a little more crazy. The change in routine, the loss of control, it’s not cool!!!

I asked one lady during exercise group what she did for exercise and she said “breathe”. Loved that answer.

Ok I guess this got long. I ended up at work 745 to 445, 20 minute lunch……..documentation took longer than I expected so I left 30 minutes late. I guess I’ll eventually learn how to handle it all.

Okay I’m going to go back to reading the year of living biblically now. and ignoring all the thank you notes, and 160+ emails, and 40+ Facebook msgs, that I’m behind on, lol. Oopsie doopsies. Maybe tomorrow.

Joke as reward for getting this far:
What kind of key doesn’t open a door?
a MON key

Jan 21, 2009 | Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none