The First Day

Yesterday, was the first day for my clinical student to start their full time clinical education at our hospital.  It has been a long time since I started out in Nuclear Medicine and what seemed easy now, it was not so easy back when I trained.  The sheer volume of information and the skills and the integrated knowledge that we needed to work on before writing the certification exam was immense, and to be honest, I think it is even more now since there is a competency profile and the associated competencies that come with it.  Putting myself in their shoes has prompted me to do something different this year.

Last Friday I had the chance to really sit down with my clinical student to map out the year.  Albeit I gave them the rotation plan for the year and we spoke about how each rotation fit into the competency profile.  BUT, I also did something different.  I gave my student two (2) questions that I wanted them to think about and to provide some guidance not only for me, but for them to think about how they could breakdown the competency profile to help them through the first clinical semester.  Here are the questions:

Orientation:  Goal Setting

1.     Having gone through the preliminary 4 day clinical rotations in the 2nd year of the program, go back into the CAMRT competency profile and list 5 competencies that you wish to work on in the first 4 weeks of your summer rotation.  Write them down on a separate piece of paper and explain to me the following:  Please be specific.

a.      Why do you want to work on these competencies?

b.      What are you going to do to on your own to help yourself to achieve these competencies?

c.       How are we going to measure that you are successful at these competencies?

Note:  If you have any comments from your PEF in those early clinical rotations, please read them and use them to help select the competencies that you wish to work on.

Reasoning:  Once you have identified what you would like to work on, I can then help you to fill in the knowledge gaps that are associated with these competencies to ensure you have a holistic view of how your chosen competencies fit in with our nuclear medicine operations.

2.     Write down and then tell me, what you would like to accomplish by the end of June, apart by fulfilling the 5 competencies that you have listed in step 1.  For example:   By the end of June, I would like to be able to look into Coral/RIS and act upon the arrival of a patient to begin the process of starting their examination (i.e. obtain the patient worksheet, and then draw up a radioactive dose in anticipation for the arrival of the patient for injection.  Then read their clinical history to understand the nature of the problem and to provide a return time on the patient flow board for imaging).  This is an example of how your competencies might begin to integrate with our nuclear medicine operations.

Reasoning:  If I can understand what you want to be good at by the midway point of the rotation, I can help you to extend your skills further and to get you to a higher level by the end of your summer rotation.

The answers that they have provided were very good and very thoughtful in my opinion.  I am trying to use the SMART principles of goal setting to break the competency profile into manageable bits so that it seems less intimidating.  Let's see what happens.