A New Job

I've been working a little bit here and there as a speech pathologist since my girls were born. I do early intervention evaluations and generally do about 3-4 per month. It's a nice way to keep my foot in the door without having to commit to too much at once. 

I love being home with my girls and am so grateful I don't have to work full time. A few months ago I picked up one early intervention kiddo for feeding therapy. We've been making slow progress and I see him once a week. 

In December I noticed one of the local hospitals placed an ad for a per diem weekend speech language pathologist position. The ad was for someone to work one weekend a month. I applied because I figured it couldn't hurt. Childcare wouldn't be an issue either since W is home on weekends. 

I interviewed right before Christmas. I have zero hospital experience professionally or from graduate school and was unsure how the interview went. I interviewed with two people and one was very nice and friendly and seemed to like me while the other wasn't impressed by my lack of experience in hospitals. While in graduate school I was so convinced I only wanted to work with kids so didn't get as broad of an experience as I could have. 

Well, I was offered the job and quickly accepted. I figured it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up. W could be with the girls on the weekends I worked and it might provide some nice "empathy training" for him as I called it.

I'm in the process of training/orienting now. The computer system is overwhelming as is the documentation. Let's not even mention the nature of the job. This hospital is a level 1 trauma center. They have a new and big head and neck cancer center. I'm not used to seeing people that are that sick for therapy. It's intense to say the least!

I've worked one weekend so far and am excited. Some moments I feel totally in over my head, but then I realize I still want to learn new skills and information. I'm not happy to continue to do the same thing forever as I still have a strong desire to learn. It means really going outside of my comfort zone to expand my knowledge and skills. While that is scary, it's also pretty exciting. 

Most of the job is doing bedside swallow evaluations. It's mainly determining the safest consistencies of food and drink for people who have been hospitalized for one reason or another (stroke, pneumonia, cancer, surgery, trauma, etc). I know I can do it and learn it, it will just take time. I'm excited to learn more and get a whole new level of experience. I work this weekend so am looking forward to being scared shitless again. Haha