Actually, paperwork is not a new experience for an SLP at any stage.  Paperwork tends to take up a rather unfortunate amount of our time which we’d rather be spending in therapy.  A sort of necessary evil, I guess.

So, a few days ago I mentioned the Giant Load of paperwork I got from the hospital at which I will be externing.  I have gone through it by now and it is much less vomit-inducing that it was originally (and I mean vomiting from nervousness).  For those interested in the whole SLP grad school thing, you might be interested about the process behind a hospital extern.

First of all, there has to be a contract signed with the hospital.  Of course, there is also contracts signed with schools, but I have a feeling these are usually much simpler than the hospital ones.  In hospital ones, it is not uncommon for the lawyers to have some back-and-forth about God Knows What in the contract before finally (hopefully) agreeing and signing off.  Sometimes it does happen that the two institutions (that is, the school and the hospital) can’t come to a legal agreement, but not very often.

The following is a list of documents I received from a particular hospital.  Your mileage may vary; every program/hospital/whatever is different.

  • First, I received a letter about the documents they needed right away, information about my orientation, and when and where I would be meeting on my First Day.
  • I got a map to the hospital.
  • I got a map of the where the rehab department is located in the hospital.
  • I received an entire page of guidelines about the case presentation I will be presenting to the staff (cue: nerves; I still can’t look at this piece of paper for very long).
  • I received a confidentiality agreement that required more effort on my part than I thought was necessary
  • I got a document with general information about the department of rehab (Well, the bit about food was good to know.  Oh, and I guess dress code, parking, and housing were important too. ;)
  • A piece of paper where I provide all my health data (shots, TB test; you have to get all these things for your graduate school clinic anyway so the information was already at hand)
  • Student Orientation Information (I also can’t look at this page very long.  Too much information.  Too much for me to worry about in advance.)
  • The Student Program Philosophy.  Concise version:  Sink or swim.  And always let the patient know they are working with a student.
  • 3 pages of Student Practicum Objectives.  Also terrifying.  I mean, I am very grateful they sent this to me; it’s nice to know in advance what is expected.  Mostly I’m just trying to read the Week 1-3 objectives and block out the rest until I’m actually at the hospital. (You’ve got to take things one at a time.)

That last one, in fact, brings me to another piece of advice to all future/current SLP graduate students.  Take things one at a time.  You can’t do everything at once and no one expects you to.  Besides, you will be surprised at how much you can get done one thing at a time.

There are several things going on these last couple weeks of school.  I will try to sort my brain out over the next few days and post about them (evaluations, end of practicum thoughts, leading a case conference, quarter progress reports, Praxis II, thesis).  I am resolved not to drop the ball with blogging despite my constant re-enactment of Chicken, With Head Cut Off.

I can do this.  It’s not productive to think anything else.