Reflection On My First Clinical Practicum

Prior to my first clinical practicum, I was nervous and terrified. After talking to current clinicians and professors, I expected clinic to be difficult, and I expected to be overwhelmed especially at the beginning of the semester. Additionally, I expected clinic to be even more difficult when combined with difficult classes and applying to graduate school. However, clinic was different than my expectations. To explain, my first clinical practicum was the least stressful aspect of my semester. I loved planning each session and thinking of fun new activities my client would enjoy. I also loved working with my client each week and seeing his progress with his goals. During the probing stage, my experience with establishing a treatment plan …show more content…
During this time, my client was unwilling to work and tried to “trick” us into thinking he had lower ability than he did. During this time, it was difficult to establish a baseline performance and form a treatment plan for the semester. However, after a few therapy sessions, we were able to form his goals and objectives for the semester after my client got accustomed to his new routine. After this period, I began to enjoy making new activities for my client. Because my client enjoys activities with movement and fun, I found it especially fun to create new activities for each therapy session. In particular, for two of his articulation goals, I tried to do a scavenger hunt with sentence strips and a magnifying glass. Although it was a simple activity, my client loved it, and his accuracy and independence on these two goals increased drastically. After we found activities that worked well for the client, such as the two articulation goals, we …show more content…
To explain, my client is very loving and likes to give hugs. Over the course of the semester, there were several incidents where the client has inappropriately touched the clinicians or others around the therapy room. For example, while a photographer was in the room, my client continuously touched the photographer’s beard and put his fingers up the photographer’s nose. If I could start the semester over, I would work on pragmatics in addition to the client’s regular goals. If I could give any advice to future clinicians, I would recommend taking the semester one therapy session at a time. This semester, I worried about things that were happening later in the semester, such as the multicultural lesson plan. However, worrying did not help at all, and the semester went so much better when I took everything one week or therapy session at a