First Fail

Okay, just breathe...

I didn't exactly 'fail' rather it was a....well, I did fail. You see, we have these things called "proficiencies" that are simply a method of measuring our skills in the clinical setting. This particular proficiency was about therapeutic modalities. Every week, we get a new proficiency that we must learn, and then we have two weeks to practice it, before finally being tested on it. Although there are plenty of modalities used, we were primarily going to be tested on using ultrasound or electrical muscle stimulation (e-stim). But here's the kicker - we were ONLY supposed to be tested on the initial setup of the treatment, for example, an AT provides us the parameters and we confidently place the patient in the correct position, and press some buttons to get the treatment going.

Now, when I say "I didn't exactly fail," this is what I mean. The Approved Clinical Instructor (ACI) was unaware of this style of testing. He was under the impression that we were supposed to be familiar with the settings, the methodology, and science behind the modality use. Needless to say, we haven't learned all of that...yet. But thankfully, all those volunteer hours clocked at Chabot, got me through the test, but I needed to get at least a 27/33 and I got a 24. Not bad for someone never formally trained in therapeutic modalities, eh?

The bottomline is I still failed. It ended up not being such a big deal because the instructor of the course informed the ACI of the correct way to grade, and everything was fixed. In fact, I re-took the test before everything was fixed, and in turn, learned a lot about modalities - so I'm ahead of the curve! That's why I didn't fail, ya heard?

Failure is not an option