Uncensored – The 4 Phases of Being a Health Student
Strap yourselves in….. this is not for the faint-hearted…. I am going to be talking very candidly about what it’s like to be a health student. And yes, I’m talking about things like the ‘shock-horror’ phase and ‘the awkward years.’
On Saturday 27th October, I addressed about 25 career development practitioners, guidance officers and careers advisers. Part of what I talked about was the 4 phases I went through when I was a health student at uni. I wasn’t sure if my experience was typical of health students, but after sharing my story, I’ve been told that it’s not that uncommon…..
PHASE 1 – WHAT AM I DOING HERE?!?!
If you’ve had a look at the course outlines for a health discipline you’re looking at studying at uni, you will see that the first year is probably filled with all sorts of science-related subjects. It’s not unusual to see heaps of chemistry, physics and biology subjects included in that first year.
Personally, I distinctly remember the first semester of my optometry degree when I was in a biology prac dissecting a plant. At the time, I couldn’t see any relevance about what on earth cutting up a plant has to do with testing people’s eyes. So I was sitting there thinking ‘what am I doing here’?
In this phase, it is worth knowing that there is light at the end of the tunnel. If I didn’t have a solid background in physical and biological sciences, it would have been impossible to understand the concepts that are relevant to testing people’s eyes that I did learn later on in the optometry degree.
PHASE 2 – THE ‘UNCO’ PHASE
There will come a time in the ‘hands on’ health professions such as podiatry, dentistry, nursing and medicine where you have to learn the techniques of doing a physical examination on a patient. Now in my case, I had to learn things like how to come up with the correct spectacle and contact lens prescription for a patient, as well as how to assess the health of the front of the eyes, inside the eyes, and to measure the eye pressure.
Unless you are gifted in the ‘hands on’ side of things, you will go through what I call the ‘unco phase’. Similar to learning how to ride a bike when you’re a kid, for a while you might think ‘I’m never going to be able to do this’. And then, if you practice enough, one day you will find it difficult to believe there was a time when you couldn’t balance on a bike. It’s like that with physical examination techniques too.
A HOT TIP – I think the most important thing to accept here is that, yes, you will most likely be unco at the beginning…. and that if you don’t face that fact and improve quickly, it is going to be a million times worse when you’re examining and treating real patients… which isn’t too far into the future. You can take some encouragement from the fact that every expert was once a beginner!! To go through the unco phase as quickly as possible, do as much practise as you can in a short space of time. When I was a student, my friends and I would go to the clinic during the uni holidays and practice the clinical techniques on each other (as the reception staff was there all year round and happy to let us in).
PHASE 3 – SHOCK HORROR!!
There will come a time when you learn about diseases that occur in humans. For me, I learned about heaps and heaps of eye diseases. The ‘shock’ comes when you start to realize that…. uh-oh….. some patients you come across are going to have diseases that you are expected to find, diagnose, treat yourself or refer on to a suitable practitioner for treatment. And then there is the horror – to think that you are just human and that you might actually MISS these diseases in patients.
I have been a practising optometrist for 9 years now, and the way have dealt with the ‘shock horror’ of being a health professional is to do an extremely thorough examination on patients. So for me, it is really all about actively listening out for the symptoms a patient has, and then to actively go looking for the (sometimes) subtle signs of eye disease. If you are not interested in doing this type of ‘detective work’, then, in my opinion, a career in health may not be for you.
PHASE 4 – THE AWKWARD YEARS
There will come a time when you actually start to perform your clinical examination on REAL PATIENTS!! This can be terrifying and awkward for so many reasons….
Hopefully by this time you’ve gone through the ‘unco’ and ‘shock horror’ phases, and have a clear understanding of what you’re doing. To me, I was terrified about doing something ‘wrong’ when I was in the consulting room with a patient. I mean, we all have a certain amount of ego and don’t like to look silly in front of other people – especially a patient or supervisor!!
When I was a student, I found the most unsettling thing about this phase was the fact that a patient had the potential to ask me any question at all about eyes. While they were with me in the consulting room, they had the opportunity to ask any random thing at all. And then I would be put on the spot and expected to answer that question. Yep… totally awkward if you don’t know the answer – but a great time to get your supervisor and listen to how they answer tricky questions!!
I also felt awkward through these final years at uni because I knew that in the not too distant future, I would graduate and be practising on my own….. yep….. unsupervised. People were going to trust ME with their eyes and vision, and, in some cases, their life. And it occurred to me that for every day I practised as a health care professional, I would need to be on my game. I would need to be someone that patients could trust to give them the best care possible.
After 9 years as a health care practitioner, I can honestly say that I still occasionally have an ‘unco’ or ‘awkward’ moment in the consulting room. Now that they don’t happen so often, it is much easier to have a different perspective on it and see it as an opportunity to learn and get better. Much easier than when I was a student and ‘unco or awkward’ all the time… and wondering if I would ever get through it!! But at least now if you are currently, or, go on to be a health student, you will be better prepared to go through these phases than I was!!
Amanda :-)
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