The man was short, tan and made a notable impression of saying everything out loud before performing his actions. Due to HIPAA and patient confidentiality, I'm unable to state his name but I was given consent to share my experience with the man we’ll call ‘Dan’. I met Dan for the first time on my 2nd week as a volunteer in the Acute Rehab Department at the UCI Medical Center, Orange. During this time, I began to have doubts about whether or not I wanted to pursue Physical Therapy because of the monotony of working as a Physical Therapy Aide had jaded me. A majority of my experience had come from working/volunteering in an outpatient clinical setting thus I had the same expectations when volunteering for inpatient. Furthermore, because of my …show more content…
This was during my 4th month as a volunteer where I learned that Dan was by far one of the sincere, motivated individuals I had ever met. A majority of my interaction involved observing and speaking to him but I was eventually able to take the time to know Dan. I could only describe these interactions as humbling because of Dan’s gratefulness towards all the therapists, clinicians, and volunteers. Not only did Dan have back-to-back sessions with occupational/physical/speech therapist but also had multiple tests/diagnostics from doctors and nurses. As an outsider, I felt overwhelmed just looking at Dans’ schedule each time I came in and didn’t believe that any of the clinicians would be highly motivated to help. I realized during this time that PT’s are much more than ‘movement specialist’ to improve patient’s physical bodies but were embodiments of altruism working alongside medical professionals to help people. Not only would they toil for hours on what treatment methods would most appropriate but took into consideration Dan’s socioeconomic background and the training that his family would need to take care of him after he left the hospital. Beforehand I would have remained oblivious to the multiple procedures and outside care required but through Dan and my inpatient experience the responsibility of becoming a PT had finally hit