End of Community Placement

So yesterday was the last day of my community placement. I didn't really know what to expect from community- the general consensus was that it was easy and there was a lot of sitting around drinking tea! 


In some aspects that was true,but I felt like it was far more than that. We went on visits in the morning which consisted of a wide variety of  tasks. Many patients had some form of leg ulcer which needed to be redressed regularly. I never knew there were so many different varieties of dressings and bandages! Many patients had cancer so the nurses visited then for support and to encourage them to visit the day hospice. These were the hardest patients for me as I didn't really know what to say to them- especially as many of them can hardly understand my accent. To me it sounds like I'm mimicking them if I try to go more 'Yorkshire'.


The one thing that I was picked up on during this placement is that my medical/biological knowledge is great but I need to concentrate on the social elements more. On the 12 Activities of Daily Living (ADLs). Almost seems ironic that this blog is called the conversion to social science when apparently I haven't converted yet! To be fair, as soon as it was picked up I concentrated on the ADLs to a greater extent than I ever had before, which, thankfully, seemed to impress my mentor.


This placement has really helped me increase my vocabulary related to wounds extensively. Before I would simply say 'they have a pressure sore on their leg'. Now I can describe the stage at which it is and what the tissue is like- ie sloughy, epithialising, granulating, eschar etc. Hopefully I can get a chance to impress my new mentor when I start my next placement.


So Monday I'm off to a new placement on a care of the elderly ward. I know my way around wards, they have essentially all been the same up to now. But lets see how it goes...