[Lab 9- May 17: CEC- Lived experience interviews]
In our lab today, we were given the choice of 3 assessments to administer to a volunteer client at the Clinical Education Center: Role Checklist, Interest Checklist and the Engagement in Meaningful Activities Survey (EMAS). Immediately, my past failure in administering the Interest Checklist floated into the forefront of my mind and I did not want to do the Interest Checklist. However, I ended up choosing the Interest Checklist because I wanted to, for lack of better words, "overcome my fear" of administering it. Let me take this moment to reflect on my first experience with the Interest Checklist:
During my placement, I had a chance to administer the Interest Checklist to a client named Joe who suffered from schizophrenia. He had paranoid and grandiose delusions that he often talked about. I see him as a charming and friendly man, whose mind simply lives in its own separate reality. On our first encounter, I was to complete an Interest Checklist with him. I had never done an Interest Checklist before but my preceptor assured me that it was a straight forward assessment and at first glance, that's what it seemed.
I sat down with Joe and I began by just talking with him and getting to know his relationship with the ACT team. Then, I continued to ask him about his typical day and if he had any hobbies. As he spoke about his daily occupations, I glanced through the checklist and was able to find a few of those activities such as listening to music. So I began to ask him further details about those hobbies: degree of interest and participation in the past, present and future. After those few hobbies were discussed, I decided to start at the top of the page, and go through each hobby with Joe. Mind you, this was not the UK version of the Interest Checklist, so it was not organized in any way. Also, Joe is a talkative fellow. For every other hobby, he had a story to tell or something to say. After the first few items, I could tell that this was going to take a while if I didn't keep him on track. I finished in just under an hour and a half.
Later my preceptor asked me how it went and was even more curious after I told her that it went alright. She told me that it usually doesn't take more than 30 minutes to complete the Interest Checklist. I was shocked because I had taken more than double that amount of time to complete it and I didn't feel like Joe and I could have finished it any faster! My preceptor continues to ask me how I had administered it, so I told her that I had went through the list, asking him about each hobby and his interest and participation in the activity throughout his lifetime. My preceptor then asks me why I hadn't given Joe the Interest Checklist and have him fill it out on his own and then discuss the results with him afterwards.
The idea of giving the client the checklist to fill out on their own had never occurred to me. For some reason, once I had received the checklist from my preceptor, I was under the impression that I was to administer this assessment and that meant that I would be asking the questions. Not once did I think of handing Joe the checklist to fill out, and he was absolutely capable of completing it independently. It did not occur to me that I could maximize client-centeredness simply by giving Joe control of filling out the checklist. It certainly would've gone much faster that way. Also, the fact that it was an assessment of Joe's interests made it more obvious that he should have been the one filling it out to avoid making any assumptions about his degree of interest.
I felt like I had failed as an OT student while I sat there, letting my preceptor's constructive criticism sink in. I could have just handed it over. Ultimately, the client knows themselves best. It was that simple.
RESOURCES to Read:
Some possible books about lived experiences of disability to add to my Book List from a Promise I made to myself:
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