- Hey guys, what is happening?
Welcome back to the DrCliffAuD vlog.
This is vlog number 74
and before I get kicked off on this vlog,
if you can do me a huge favor and click that like button.
It really helps this video get shared more often by YouTube
and it helps me reach a broader audience
so if you could do that for me really quick
I would greatly appreciate it.
That being said, this is technically my vlog video
that is done after Memorial Day.
So my last vlog, vlog number 73, came out on Sunday.
I mean, all my vlogs usually come out on Sundays
and so I didn't have a chance to mention
how much I appreciate all of the fallen men and women
who served our country.
I am a military member myself and some of you
who've seen kind of like my walkthrough videos in my clinic
know that I have an American flag in my office
and that is there to specifically remind me of the people
who did not come back home with us.
And it gives me a little bit of context every day
in terms of if I'm having a bad day,
all you have to do is look over at that flag
and realize that your day is not really going that bad.
So again, a huge shout out really
to all of our service members who are serving
and putting their lives in danger,
and then especially to those
who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country.
So I just wanted to make sure that I said that.
It's something that's definitely near and dear to my heart
so there we go.
And then the other thing
that I really want to talk today about
is the fact that we actually have
a student in our clinic now.
So just to kind of give you an understanding
of how this works in audiology,
all audiologists go through their undergraduate programs,
and then they apply, you know,
they graduate, they apply to different graduate schools,
and they have to do another four years in graduate school
to get their Doctorate in Audiology.
And this is a clinical doctorate,
so they're not like medical doctors,
we're not medical doctors.
We're not research audiologists,
we are clinical audiologists
meaning that we are getting this doctoral degree
specifically to go in and treat patients.
And the last year of this four year doctoral program
is typically considered an externship.
Now, just to rewind a second here.
There are a few programs out there
that are condensed programs where you spend two years
at the inside of that graduate program
and then your third year is your externship,
but in the case of for me and in the case for this student
that we just brought on,
it was a fourth year audiology externship.
And this particular student
just started with us about two weeks ago now,
she's been with us for two weeks.
And I kind of want to get into the aspect
of why I actually decided to bring on a student.
Well, first and foremost, I decided to bring on a student
this year in particular
in the midst of all of this craziness
with moving to a new clinic and with COVID going on
and all of that stuff
because I felt like I needed to contribute to some degree
because they were significantly short changed
during their second and third year because of COVID.
I mean, they hardly had any opportunities
to go to external rotations
throughout the first three years of their program
and so I'm, and there was a lot of externships
that were not accepting fourth year students this year.
And I wanted to basically help with that a little bit.
So, I had a discussion with Ashley.
This was, I would say, at the end of last year,
you know, close to maybe October, November,
and we decided you know what?
I think it's probably,
we think it's probably a good idea to bring in a student
as a fourth year extern in our clinic
and provide them with what we believe
will be a valuable experience
before they graduate with their doctoral degree.
So here this the two weeks ago
is when we first brought the student in.
And really the first couple of weeks
has been more of kind of gaging
where this individual's at,
seeing how much experience that she has.
And to be quite honest with you,
I just, I feel bad in a sense that the training
and education that she's received thus far,
and she went to a fantastic program,
but COVID has really decimated the amount of experience
that she should have at this point.
And, you know, part of me is kind of like,
boy, this is going to take a lot more work
than what I expected and then the other part of me
is kind of like you know what?
You know, at least I feel like she's going to be getting
a fantastic education at our clinic
meaning I don't know if I'm a good preceptor
and that's what we call ourselves,
those who kind of train students
along the way as preceptors.
And I don't know if I'm a good one.
I mean, I spent a little time precepting,
right when I graduated from my doctoral program in 2016.
I spent like maybe, I don't know,
six months providing some very indirect preceptorship
at that time.
But the question becomes is what am I gonna learn
from this too?
I don't think that it's just a learning experience
for a student.
And in fact, when you really want to learn something,
try to teach someone something, right?
I mean, that's kind of what this is all about here as well.
So the student's gonna be learning stuff from me,
I'm gonna be learning stuff from the student.
I'm gonna be forced to learn how to better interact,
how to better educate,
just how to be a better clinician myself
in order to make sure that this student
comes out of this year long externship
significantly further ahead
than where she would have been otherwise.
And the thing that I really take pride in
is that in my clinic, in our clinic,
I really try to uphold a really high standard.
All of you who've been watching my channel
for the past couple of years,
who've been watching my vlogs,
like, you know my mentality
when it comes down to the quality of care
that we try to provide.
And the fact of the matter is, is that there's a lot
of clinics out there, both from a rotation standpoint
and from an externship standpoint
that just don't follow best practices.
And they treat an externship
like a a cheap form of labor.
And that is not how I want to treat it
inside of my clinic.
I want to treat this as an opportunity
to have this student learn a ton of information,
make me better by having to teach
and make sure that I'm articulating things
in a way that can be understood.
Different people have different learning styles
so I have to be able to kind of augment
and change the way that I present information with this.
But there's a really high standard to uphold
inside of my clinic
and I have to get this particular student up to speed
and try to get them up to speed as fast as humanly possible
because at the end of the day she's there to contribute
and learn how to be an independent clinician
in a lot of ways.
And I take that as a huge, it's a huge challenge.
And so right now I'm actually thinking
of different things that we need to be doing
to do our job better.
And I think that the first thing that we need to do
inside of the clinic is to really establish
these personality traits.
And there's a variety of different questionnaires
and things like that, that people can do
to identify what type of personality does someone have
and then how do they best learn
and how do they best apply, you know,
their own value to a particular clinic or situation?
And that way that can help me better understand
how I need to communicate with this particular individual
and not just this individual,
but the rest of my staff as well.
My staff oftentimes looks to me for answers,
which makes sense, I mean, I own the clinic
and they want to make sure that they're doing things
in a way that is best for patients
and basically is following the vision
that I have for the clinic.
But, you know, there are a lot of challenges
when you're trying to make sure
that the clinic is running smoothly
at a really, really high level
and you're also trying to take time
to teach someone how to do something
and let them kind of make their own mistakes
but be there to kind of catch their mistakes
and provide, you know, corrective action on that.
And it's just a really different dynamic.
But when you look at a hospital perspective,
some of the best hospitals in the world
are teaching hospitals, okay?
So you have these resident physicians
who are coming in out of med school
and they are going to these really, really prestigious,
you know, university clinics
and in those university clinics,
they are working very, very closely
with the physicians who have a ton of experience
and the job of those physicians is to make sure
that these young physician come in
and learn as much as they possibly can
because those residencies only last
for a certain period of time
and by the time you're done with your residency
you are basically independent
to a large degree as a physician.
And I think of our clinic as at least striving
to be one of those premier top tier clinics
that someone could go to
because they know that when they come to our clinic
that they're gonna learn a ton.
And even if they choose not to stay with us,
even if we can't keep them on after their externship is over
I want a student, or I want that graduating audiologist
to be able to go anywhere
and be able to handle and tackle basically anything.
And really, I see this as an opportunity
for us to advance best practice,
the use of best practices inside of the profession.
I mean, to really inundate a student
on the importance of following best practices
and how to actually follow those best practices,
then if they end up going somewhere else,
they're gonna walk into a clinic situation
where most likely because the vast majority
of clinics do not follow comprehensive best practices
but there's a higher likelihood
that that clinic will start following more best practices
if a student, or if a graduating audiologist goes there
and has an ability to kind of articulate the importance
of performing certain procedures
and measures and things like that.
So this is a really, really pivotal year.
I'm hoping that it goes well,
I'm hoping that I'm up to the task.
I already know that I'm gonna be spending more time
in the clinic just going in, taking time away from,
you know, other things that I do to go into the clinic
to make sure that this individual is getting the attention
that they need to learn the things that they need to learn
in a relatively short amount of time
because the way I see it is that for a year
or year and a half, these students
who are in their fourth year externships right now
received little to no hands-on training
and who knows how much actual education
from a remote perspective, but we've got to get,
I'm thinking two, two and a half years worth of training
done in one year of on the job training.
And so it's a really tall order.
I know that I'm up to the task.
I wouldn't have accepted a fourth year student
if I didn't want to commit a significant amount
of energy to training a fourth year student and who knows?
This individual could become a significant contributor
to the staff and we would potentially want
to keep this individual on after graduation.
And if that was the case, that would be fantastic
because they would be perfectly inundated
with how we do things in the clinic,
with the standard of care
that we are setting out to achieve.
And who knows, it might turn into something
to where we consistently have a fourth year extern,
but, you know, we have a couple
of really good audiology programs here
just in the Phoenix area.
We have Arizona State University and we have AT still.
And depending on how far Arizona, sorry, not Arizona State
but University of Arizona students are willing to travel
we potentially might be bringing on
some University of Arizona students as well.
Now I know there's huge competitive side
between U of A and ASU, whatever.
I don't care, I went to University of Illinois,
what do I care?
That being said, though,
there are rotations that happen
outside of fourth year externship.
Like I mentioned before, most audiology programs,
they will have usually the first year
of the graduate program you'll spend inside
of the audiology clinic of the university.
And then year two, you go to a couple,
maybe two to three different external placement sites
that offer a variety of different types of services
like pediatric care, cochlear implants, surgical rotations,
hearing aids, private hearing aid clinics, hospitals,
whatever the case may be.
And you go, and you sample, basically.
You learn from all of these different types
of audiology that's being performed.
The scope of practice for audiology is absolutely huge
and we just kind of pigeonhole into the we just want to be
the best hearing aid clinic for audiology that's out there.
That's our goal.
What I'm saying here is, is that these students
who go to these programs, we potentially might be bringing
on a second year student for a semester rotation
or a third year student for a semester rotation
to kind of get them somewhat inundated
and get them some hands-on experience
for if they go to, you know,
a different clinic for their fourth year externship.
But I have to say so far so good.
There is definitely a lot of catching up that we have to do.
I'm starting to think of different projects
that this particular student can do
to make sure that she comes out of this
not just better and smarter
and a better ability to apply fundamentals
and best practices with patients,
but also getting to the point
where she's seeking knowledge on her own
which is something I'm huge on, right?
I mean, I spend almost every weekend of my life
since I graduated trying to learn as much as I can
about audiology, about broad scope audiology,
about narrow, you know, scope on hearing aids in audiology.
But you know, the way I see it is that
if I ever stop learning or stop trying to learn new things
in this profession, then I should just get out
of this profession because you're no longer professional.
You know, being a professional means is that
you don't just go to work nine to five,
you go to work nine to five
and then when you're done with work,
you're still working on personal development
to get better at what you do.
And to be honest with you, nine to five,
I mean 40 hours a week.
I don't know how many hours are in a week,
I could calculate it out right now
but I know that there's significantly more hours
in a week than what you spend at work.
And I understand that there has to be some kind
of work-life balance
but if you think that you're gonna progress
in this profession and be an actual professional
by only committing 40 hours a week
you have got another thing coming.
I don't know anyone who can actually get
significantly better at what they do
by applying the bare minimum of effort
by just going to work and going through
their standard processes and not trying to think
at a higher level and trying to obtain
as much information as humanly possible about their craft.
I think Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book,
something like 10,000 hours
to become an expert in something.
The book might be called 10,000 Hours, I'm not really sure.
But the whole premise of that book
is that if you do something for 10,000 hours
it will make you an expert in that particular area.
So the more that you can learn, the quicker
you're gonna get there.
Like the more time that you commit to learning
the quicker you're going to achieve
being an expert in your particular field.
Now I've heard other, you know,
books and people saying like you don't need to contribute
a full 10,000 hours,
you need to contribute very dedicated amount of time
and it shouldn't even take you up to 10,000 hours.
So I'm just kind of using that as a general reference here
but the point still stays the same.
You've got to contribute a lot of focus, time, attention
and energy on what you want to achieve.
And that is something that I want, if nothing else,
if I do a bad job of being a preceptor
and I am not able to help the training and education
of this particular student going through our clinic
for her fourth year rotation
I want her to come away
from it really seeking knowledge from now into the longterm
throughout the entire course of her career.
Because when you really think about it,
there is a good 30 maybe 30 plus years
that she's going to be in this profession
after she graduates from her program
and I want her to really be set up for success
in the long-term.
This is probably not the last time
that you'll hear me talking about being a preceptor.
I'm sure I will share mistakes that I've made along the way,
things that I wish I would have done differently,
that's just all a part of it.
I really appreciate you guys hearing me
kind of ramble about us having a student on board.
I'm really excited about it.
If you liked the video, go ahead and give that a thumbs up.
If you haven't given it a thumbs up already,
subscribe to the channel
if you haven't done that already
and as always, I'll see you next week.
(upbeat dance music)