Thursday, May 29, 2008

Getting ready for the BIG BARA BRAG!

Today I was sitting in our Cluster meeting (happens once a month - everyone moans, tell about their challenges and successes, hand in their stats...that type of thing), and I was reminded of having to make a poster. See, tomorrow is the Bara OT Brag Day - basically a 'show and tell' for occupational therapists.

I must admit that I'm rather excited about this all, since it's been a while since I've really gotten any recognition for what I do at my clinic. At varsity if you did something well, you were made aware of that fact by your friends and lecturers....but when you are basically placed in the 'boendoes' - where you can see donkey cars when looking out of your office window just 50km out of Jo'burg... Let's just say that compliments are few and far. And not that I'm always wanting compliments, but it tends to get you rather motivated. And motivation is what I need right now, coz I have all these ideas but no drive to realise my ideas.

I would LOVE to start an educational campaign within our clinic to raise awareness regarding the role of an OT in PHC (Primary Health Care) and also appropriate referral (those tend to be few and far in-between!). And I wanna do a course with the creches in our areas on Developmental Guidelines and how to stimulate children to ready them for Gr.R and Gr.1 - a mammoth task I'm facing on my own within my Perceptual Groups that I am running. I find that a lot of the mothers I work with don't know the importance of stimulating their children from early on, and then their children can't do basic counting, don't know body parts, colours or shapes before Gr.R. They go to school and actually FAIL Gr.R due to not knowing these things - it could have been PREVENTED to start with. Okay, but this is just me having a mini frustration outburst.

To get back to Bara Brag Day. I have to make a poster tonight just to depict all my successes and what I've been up to at my clinic since I started my community service year in January 2008. Luckily all the photos are printed, but the ideas are still in my head and not on paper and I can see myself working into the WEEEE hours of the night (reminds me of 4th year OT at WITS). I've been working on the presentation concept since this morning when I sat in the meeting being reminded of what I have to do...and now it is half past 9 at night and I've done my washing, had dinner... did some MORE washing... NO poster!

So, I thought I would share my ideas with the world...to make it a better place and all. Here goes...

Hope the concept looks cool.

Anycase, knocking off now to finish the washing - Gotta look good for the presentation, you know!