One area of feedback that has really helped me over the past few years of this program was to find the line between being empathetic and putting your own self and own experiences on that person, and assuming that you know how they feel or will react to something. This is something I am continually working on, but do believe that I have made large strides. At this point, I am able to listen to a patient’s complaints and subjective report, and use my own experiences to frame, but not make any assumptions about, my expectations of how the remainder of the session will go. And because I have built up this instinct, I anticipate that I will carry this consideration in the back of my mind as I progress toward more independent practice over the coming year. I think that other people, both faculty and peers, bringing this critique to my attention has been really helpful with developing my identity as a practitioner.

              In terms of academic performance, I can honestly say that I have learned a tremendous amount about myself as a student and a working professional over the past two years of didactic work. The times that I have performed the best in this programs have been those in which I have prepared early, and in a slightly relaxed way. As much as PT school can be very stressful, I do not perform well when I feel very stressed, so that past year I have made a concerted effort to resist feeling overwhelmed and it has worked in my favor. However, my weakness in school has been not overly embracing that relaxation, and still committing the time and effort to my work that it requires. This also became apparent when studying for the Comps, as I definitely took a more laid back approach to studying and preparing as compared to many of my peers. In the end it paid off and I did learn/ gain a stronger grasp on a lot of material, but there are definitely a lot of my peers who were more strict about their grueling study schedules, and I did feel that I was behind a lot of them. I think that while preparing for my boards over the coming year, I will take the slow and steady pace that I prefer, but I will be strict with myself about covering the material in the time limits that I set for myself, to make sure that I stay on track.

              In terms of developing myself as a professional, I anticipate that my biggest problem will be with whittling down the list of things that I want to do to allow myself to be more focused. At the moment, I have about 15 idea of paths that I may want to take over the course of my professional life. And I want to start working on all of them right away, but I think that would decrease the impact that I could make toward each goal.

Therefore, I have made a list of the topics that interest me, and that I may want to work toward in the future, and they are organized based on the importance that each has to me. My priority over the coming year is to build as many professional relationships and network as best I can while I am here in Texas, as this will be the state in which I will work for at least the foreseeable future. I hope to take advantage of speaking with all of the amazing therapists down here and get their input on my topics of interest to see if I can be a part of any ongoing research over the coming year and beyond.

With my first full-time clinical beginning in 3 days, I am the most concerned that my anxiety will impact my performance and memory while I am working or being asked to reflect on the spot. I plan to bring a couple of resources with me to the hospital so I can look up information to help me understand more complex patients either at lunch or at the end of the day. I am hoping that will help me to at least feel more confident when giving answers or developing quality follow up questions. I also hope to utilize my professors and mentors for this same purpose.

Beyond this year of clinicals, I hope that I will have developed an even broader library of resources. I have already built up a list of academic journals and books that I hope to be able to follow while working fulltime. I also have a large library of documents from my employer regarding geriatrics- related physical therapy research. As far as I am concerned, if she has decided that these particular referencing, they have merit. In addition to these steps, I do receive PT in Motion every month, and plan to continue to do so. I also am subscribed to JAMA and the HPA newsletter, which send me regular updates of new articles that they have published as well as ongoing research.