Working hours are 8am til 5pm with an hour for lunch at about 2:30pm (yes, this is late in our terms!) although quite civilised we have an hour for lunch although this is often interrupted by clients needing some form of ‘supervision’!
My timetable generally involves first thing in the morning doing ADL’s (Activities of Daily Living) in this case washing and dressing either assessments or training. For example; I/we go in to residents apartment and help them to get showered, cleaned teeth, dressed etc with the aim for the resident to become more and more independent so each time we aim to get them to do more and more for themselves. This week I will be working with a Spanish client alone to try to get him to increase his independence. He and his wife are lovely and put up with my poor Spanish regularly always with a smile and help me out a bit when I get stuck which is often as they don’t speak any English but with gestures and the words I do know (and my now slightly battered Spanish English Dictionary!) we somehow seem to get by (most of the time!!).
Then, each morning - rehabilitation sessions in the gym, these are quite hmm how can I put it ‘interesting’. Each morning between 10 and 12:30 we have 5 sessions in the gym with a total of between 30 and 40 residents coming, often about 6-8 at a time..! The physiotherapist and OT work together but they work in a way that they set clients off on an activity such as walking with the parallel bars then leave them to it for a bit and go to another one e.g. set them off doing an activity using trunk rotation and another working on hand strength then go back to the first one again etc…As you may be able to tell this is not a way of working I have experienced before…..However it appears to work for them here I will leave you to form your own opinions…!
At 12:30 there is generally a group/class activity such as psychomotor group, cognitive stimulation (for those with low cognitive level), cookery, drama, relaxation (run by me in English!!) a different one each day.
Then at 1:30 the clients have lunch and we keep an eye on those that need some supervision/support to ensure they are managing to feed themselves and correct techniques make adjustments if necessary.
2:30 is our lunch time..! Then at 4/4:15 we have another group/class such as artistic workshop, healthy back class, stretching, and on Mondays and Fridays there is a film shown one day English and the other Spanish! As you can see it is a pretty full programme of events each day and keeps me on my toes…!!
Main differences between working in Spain and UK…. Hmmmm there are many but the bigger ones are things like Risk assessment and Manual handling (not sure they know what either of these concepts are as such!). In the UK we are taught not to manually lift patients instead using techniques and aids to assist, due to legislation and needing to care for our backs etc… However, here there is much more lifting involved (I have been told I have to abide by the UK way..!). Of course there is the language as well….!
Flexibility is probably the key word to describe a characteristic which is required for this placement as things tend to change at short notice! For example my relaxation group had to change venue at last minute as the windows had not been fixed and it was freezing cold in the intended room. Today…. supervision changed as it is usually after lunch (about 3:30) then at 1:30 was told it would be now..! It certainly keeps you on your toes constantly!
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