Hello! My name is Alexa, and I am in my clinical rotation with Sodexo at Newport Beach Hospital. I am absolutely loving my clinical rotation, and I am astonished by just how much I am learning every day (and how much I’m able to fit in my brain!). The most interesting and applicable thing I have learned so far is creative sentencing, or how to word a question multiple ways.
Being in a clinical site means interacting with patients who may not be at their best. These patients could have taken a lot of medications that make them drowsy, be in pain from surgery, or just not feeling well and want to be left alone. In order to gather all the information needed, the questions need to get creative.
I watched my preceptors choose specific words and structure their sentences in certain ways so that it’s easier for the patient to understand them. When it was my turn to interview the patient, it ended in my preceptor jumping to save me when I froze up and couldn’t think of a different way to word my questions.
After lots of practice and lots of feedback, I finally understood what my preceptors were trying to teach me. The next patient I interviewed, I took a deep breath, walked in with confidence, and spoke with the patient like they were they only one in the room. If something didn’t make sense, then I asked again in a different way. I made my conversation about them, about me understanding how they got to this spot, not about the questions I so badly wanted answers to, and realized I got all the information that I came for.
I learned that it’s not the one answer I get from the patient that matters. I learned that it’s the many answers I get from the patient in different ways I word the same question. I learned that focusing on the patient is what matters most, and distractions can turn to silence in the background. It’s a slow process, but every day I become more confident and more sure of my creative sentencing.
Being in a clinical site means interacting with patients who may not be at their best. These patients could have taken a lot of medications that make them drowsy, be in pain from surgery, or just not feeling well and want to be left alone. In order to gather all the information needed, the questions need to get creative.
I watched my preceptors choose specific words and structure their sentences in certain ways so that it’s easier for the patient to understand them. When it was my turn to interview the patient, it ended in my preceptor jumping to save me when I froze up and couldn’t think of a different way to word my questions.
After lots of practice and lots of feedback, I finally understood what my preceptors were trying to teach me. The next patient I interviewed, I took a deep breath, walked in with confidence, and spoke with the patient like they were they only one in the room. If something didn’t make sense, then I asked again in a different way. I made my conversation about them, about me understanding how they got to this spot, not about the questions I so badly wanted answers to, and realized I got all the information that I came for.
I learned that it’s not the one answer I get from the patient that matters. I learned that it’s the many answers I get from the patient in different ways I word the same question. I learned that focusing on the patient is what matters most, and distractions can turn to silence in the background. It’s a slow process, but every day I become more confident and more sure of my creative sentencing.
