Lisa Chee

N360 MH Clinical
Professor Chat
September 20, 2014
WK04 Clinical Reflective Journal
Family Treatment Center- Residential
Objectives:

To communicate effectively, to maintain a calm composure and to engage the audience

during psycho-social presentation

To converse with different patients and to correlate their speech and behavior to their
diagnoses

To observe the dynamics, structure and activities offered at Family Treatment Center

Today was my third day on the unit and I was assigned to work with adolescence and
children at the residential section of the Family Treatment Center (FTC). The major highlights
for me during this clinical was conducting a psycho-social presentation about teamwork,
interacting with the patients and engaging in various activities provided on the unit.
It was the second time that my colleague and I led a group on the unit. This time, I felt more
prepared and less anxious and disorganized. For our psycho-social activity, the patients were
asked to work together in groups of four to complete a given task. The task was to stack plastic
red cups in a given pattern, utilizing a device made out of rubber bands and ribbons. Our
methods of teaching the topic of teamwork went extremely well. Everyone worked well together
and in the end, was able to verbalize the importance of working as a team. Occasionally, some
individuals acted out or got too excited and were speaking when someone else was speaking.

Therefore, something that could have been handled better would be to have our appointed person
settle these individuals down when they were speaking out of turn.
Throughout the day, I was able to observe how structured this unit is, compared to that of
Kekela Mauka and Kekela Makai. For example, patients on this unit are required to complete
chores (e.g. changing their bed sheets) and attend meetings/ activities as a group. During the
morning meeting, I also learned about their point system and how various levels/ privileges are
achieved. Lastly, I had fun interacting with different patients during free-period. We talked
stories, played card games, watched movies and played with the therapy dog.
Towards the end of the day, an incident that frightened me was when one of the patients
started acting out and raised his voice in the hallway. It scared me a bit when the nurses began to
close all the doors and kept the rest of the patients in the dayroom. But I was relieved that no
serious incident occurred and everyone was safe.
Overall, I had a great day on the unit and learned a lot today. Personally, I noticed that it was
much easier to converse with adolescence and children compared to adults. Additionally, they
were much more engaging in psychosocial and psychoed group sessions. I look forward to
working at the acute section of the FTC next week!