Which observation hours count?

[ammonihah99]

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I am a volunteer at a local hospital in their pediatric rehab department (finally!) and I just have a few questions:

1. This setting counts as outpatient correct? We do occasionally go on acute/inpatient rounds when needed, but most is scheduled visits with patients who are not admitted.

2. How many of my hours count as official observation hours for the PTCAS application? Some of my job is cleaning equipment, making copies, organizing supplies, helping the PTs, OTs and SLPs etc., but some of it is officially sitting down and observing. I would say it's about 50/50. Should I only count when I am officially observing, or all the hours in general? I am keeping track of both just in case.

3. Should I try to observe the OTs and SLPs? The office manager told me not to ignore them as far as helping them, but how much of an effort should I make to observe them? Obviously it is valuable to know what they do, but I can only observe so much before the office manager will start getting on my case for not working enough. Should I sacrifice some observation hours with PT to observe the other disciplines?

THANK YOU!

 

[nicolej5]

I volunteered in the same setting and put in acute and the PT signed of on that. If your setting sees both acute and outpatient I would go with acute.

 

[ammonihah99]

Should I not specify which hours are which? I'm not sure what is accepted as general practice, I just don't want to be dishonest on purpose. I don't want to put 40 hours of acute when in reality i only had 5 and the rest were a mix of scrubbing toys and observing outpatient. But I also don't want to be put on the bottom of the stack because I didn't play the game. Frustrated.

 

[NewTestament]

You should count all those hours. Many of my "observation" hours were doing what you were doing: cleaning beds, doing laundry, and other menial tasks. It's part of the experience. It would almost be impossible to track how many hours were strictly observation hours. If you check in at noon, and don't leave until 3:00 pm, count three hours. Don't count 1.15 hours or something. You invested the time and you deserve all the credit.

Yes, count it as 'acute' and not outpatient. It'll enhance your application. I'm assuming you've observed at another outpatient clinic.

Kevin

 

[Litlwarrior08]

Ummmm..thought PTCAS was looking for time spent w/ or in PT dept setting observing-and all those other tasks, not OT or SLP. The app has places for you do divide up the time in various settings, in/out/accute/etc

As a PT, and when doing clinics, you will be working w/ all the disciplines especially in a hospital setting so that is valuable experience.......but not necessarily counts towards the PT observation time. That being said ... there are no PTCAS observation police. 🙂

 

[ammonihah99]

I am speaking to the value of having a deeper, more well-rounded understanding of patient care, not to bolster an application. I am just curious as to how important it is to experience these disciplines at this point (especially at the cost of PT hours), or will I be more exposed to this later on in my more formal education.

I also think I need to apologize for the tone of my previous post, I don't mean to accuse anyone of falsifying documentation or being dishonest, I just don't know what's accepted practice and what's not. I'm not out to be a crusader of truth or anything.

 

[Azimuthal]

How many hours do you have documented and signed off? That's your total. You may segregate to outpatient, acute, etc.

Let's clear things up here. 'Observe' does not just imply literally standing there, watching the PT as if you're a medicare auditor. It also includes the act of noticing or perceiving; to gain information. If a clinic full of PTs did not have anyone else scrubbing toys and washing sheets, who's responsibility do you think that falls under? You're to observe, and to my understanding volunteering hours count. What better way to conduct an observation? That means all the hours you put in 'contributing' to that PT clinic, 'experiencing' and gaining the understanding of the roles of a PT falls under your official observation.

As for the OTs and SLP, if they're doing something that interests you, please do gain as much from it as you can. As a PT volunteer, you will notice that there are numerous times that PTs interact with OTs and SLPs - especially in in-patient and acute areas. This should be counted as part of your hours also because you are under the PT umbrella, gaining insight on the interaction of the team. I wouldn't sacrifice my PT hours if observing the other specialties are not within the oversight of the PT and are not recorded under PT hours, however. Good luck.

http://www.ptcas.org/PTHours/

 

[okramango]

I volunteered in a hospital inpatient rehab center for almost a year. A lot of that time was spent cleaning, photocopying, etc., and I also spent some time observing OT when PT was slow and only OTs were working. My supervising PT signed off all of those hours as PT observation for my application. The way my time there was divided was not an issue at all, and as other posters have stated, all of those experiences were valuable in terms of learning about PT as a profession.

However, I would divide the acute hours from the outpatient hours, as those are quite different settings. Perhaps you can record these on the application as two different observation experiences, so that you can list both the acute and outpatient observations. It looks good to observe a variety of settings in this way. The only issue is that PTCAS does not allow the same PT to verify your hours in two different settings, so you would need a different PT to verify your acute hours than the person verifying your outpatient hours.

 

[ammonihah99]

Why would PTCAS not allow the same PT to verify multiple settings? There are other PTs there, but I have never worked with them and I would feel awkward asking them to verify for me. Lame.

 

[DCasey]

There is some inconsistency in how PTCAS uses "settings" in its application. In some places, an "observation setting" relates to the type of experience, and in others it relates to the actual facility. When I attempted to clarify with PTCAS, they told me that for the purposes of observation hours, a "setting" is the actual facility. Therefore one PT should be able to verify for acute, SNF, sub-acute, etc. if that facility contains all of those services. You can just break down the hours under the umbrella entry. However, if you follow one particular PT to several facilities, I suppose it would be a problem.

Okramango did you also attempt to clarify with PTCAS and receive a different response?

 

[okramango]

.
Okramango did you also attempt to clarify with PTCAS and receive a different response?

PTCAS told me that they cannot send verification emails for two different settings to the same email address. They said that if the same PT has an alternate email address, then the two different email addresses can be listed, so that two verifications can go to the same PT.

The reason I was thinking that the OP might need two separate verifications is because each setting can be listed as either inpatient or outpatient. Since the OP has both inpatient and outpatient experience at this same setting, it might be best to list this setting twice, in order to list both the inpatient and outpatient hours. I don't think there was a way to break down inpatient vs. outpatient hours under one listing, but I could be wrong about that.

 

[DCasey]

Thank you for your response Okramango. That reasoning makes sense to me for the inpatient/outpatient breakdown, since there is no way separate those hours on the application.