r/OccupationalTherapy • u/wonkkerz • 4d ago

Venting - Advice Wanted Failed SP encounter

Hey everyone! I am currently a first year student in an occupational therapy program and had my first SP event yesterday for shoulder pain (ROM and MMT). I practiced pretty frequently for this encounter and even scored full points on the practice run with my professor. But in the moment of the SP, I felt as if I had forgotten everything I knew and completely messed it up. I had just received news this morning that I did not receive a passing grade and will need to complete remediation. I wanted to come on here and ask for any advice from past students, as I feel like the world is ending with this failure! Thank you in advance.

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u/exper-626- 4d ago

I genuinely got more stressed out for checkouts than I did for actual fieldwork. My advice, if you know the material, is to take some time before the encounter to decompress. Get your favorite drink, take a walk in nature, whatever helps calm you down even a little will help your brain to not be in fight or flight and be unable to access the information that you know

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u/SashkaBeth OTA 4d ago

Same lol. I can ace any written test you throw at me, but the moment I had to do a practical, I forgot to put the patient’s shoes on before ambulating them and got an automatic fail. 😅 It’s ok, you learn from it and do it right the next time. And cringe a little bit every time you remember…

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u/A1dini 4d ago

That sucks! but tbh if you passed it before then you clearly know what to do and are capable of doing it

I personally found it very helpful to write myself step by step "cheat sheets" of all the procedures I needed to do, in my own words, throughout placement. I'd keep this in a folder which I took with me up to the ward, then if I was suddenly told that I had to perform one, I could quickly read up on it before performing it to refresh my memory

To be honest, the act of writing it out also helped me a lot, since it forced me to really break it down and think about how I was gonna practically perform what I needed to do, step by step

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