Clinical Skills Confidence: The 90% Days
Most days, I love my job.
Some days are just hard. I’m tired from being up multiple times with my baby the night before, I have to go to a bunch of meetings, I’m worried about a family member or friend, or I just haven’t gotten a lot of “me” time lately. Whatever the reason, some days are 90% days.
These are the days that I still manage to target my students’ goals. All my kids get seen for the day. My logs get done for Medicaid billing. But there aren’t any bells and whistles going on. And you know what? That’s ok. I might leave that day thinking, “oh I should’ve done X, Y, Z.” It’s ok though. My students still received quality speech therapy. I still targeted speech/language goals all day. I still did my job.
I believe we have to stop beating ourselves up when our therapy isn’t super planned out and there’s not a new activity every single week. This year has tested my ability to balance work and life more than I ever thought possible because I have a baby at home (more on that in a blog post later). Sometimes it’s more important to decompress on the weekend than make a new activity. That might mean coming in cold on Monday and pulling something off my shelves to do. Is that ok? Absolutely! It doesn’t make you a “bad SLP.” In fact, I feel like more years of experience has helped me be able to think on my feet more and find creative ways to target my students’ goals on the fly.
So the next time you feel like you have a 90% day, smile and tell yourself it’s ok!
Thank you for this, I need to remember this, especially as the school year rolls on and becomes more hectic. I am getting older and just don’t have the energy I used to have to plan all the amazing things for each group. Also, as the paperwork load gets greater and documentation becomes even more and more burdensome, unfortunately, something has to go at times.
I wholeheartedly agree! The demands are increasing, but the amount of work isn’t decreasing. I believe that as long as we’re hitting the students’ goals we’re doing our jobs! You’re amazing – don’t forget that!