Introduction
Clinical rotations form a major requirement for medical students, as it remains an avenue of actual application of what the students learn in the classrooms and further learning experience. In addition, clinical rotations offer an opportunity for the students to gain diverse experiences through working in different medical institutions and interacting with different medical professionals. Working alongside medical experts greatly helps in the assimilation of practical skills and the gaining of new and modern skills especially in radiology. However, not all skills learned in the classroom or lecture halls find their application in the field. Slight differences occurring between the clinical practices and observations remain optimized in the reporting stage of the clinical procedures.
Observations on clinical rotations
In the clinical rotation observations, the aspect of adequate preparation before undertaking any clinical examination gets extra emphasis and its application helps the students to articulate the steps accurately to avoid any medical errors. As recorded in the references of assignment two, proper preparations precede every clinical examination simply because good preparation is the key to success. The references postulate that it is imperative to prepare the patient prior to the diagnosis, plan for needs such as language barriers and develop a strategy to reduce patient pain, especially in radiology. These preparations are important in the creation of a friendly environment in which both the patient and the medical professional are at ease to avoid adverse medical malpractices. In radiology departments of many hospitals, room preparation is paramount to both the patient and the technician. As observed during the clinical rotations, preservation of segregated areas within the room for aprons, dust coats, and x-ray shields reduce overcrowding of the room and thus leave enough space for the technician to maneuver his or her way around their patients in the stretcher. This observation concurs significantly, with what reference material presents in that, the references emphasize the prior preparations of both the patient, radiographer and the radiology room. Although the reference materials do not give a standard format of clinical preparation, some preparations depend on the condition of the patient, status of the equipment available and general facilities present in the hospital. Clinical rotations would therefore offer diverse preparation skills depending on the different hospital and the different cases one encounters.
Moreover, a unique observation completely in line with the observations from the references of assignment two is that each hospital has its own protocol followed in every clinical examination. The different protocols and procedures in different hospitals pose a threat of possible confusion to the medical students. The clinical rotations help to identify these different examination protocols as one moves from one hospital to the other but although many view it as an opportunity to make students flexible, it is difficult to master the steps of a procedure as the steps changes from hospital to hospital. The references agree with what actually happens in the hospitals and due to the different protocols observed in the clinical rotations, the reference provides recommendations that it is important to develop an optimal reporting style and logic. For instance, some hospitals use mortise oblique for foot x-ray while others use 450 obliques for the same examination. The reference material advocates the optimization of the results through the application of a standard reporting format. Clinical rotation helps the students to compare different protocols presented in different hospitals and the appreciation of diverse methods of carrying out a particular clinical examination. Although the different protocols can result in confusion, they can create flexibility in the usage of diverse procedures for a particular clinical examination
Another major observation relates to the experiences offered by the reference materials and the experience gained as one rotates in different health facilities. Skills in interpersonal interactions, development of good working relationships and conflict solution skills develop as one engages in clinical rotations. At some point in the course of study, our interaction skills get tested as frequently as one encounters negative criticisms not only by the patients but also by other physicians and other support staff in the health center. However, clinical rotation offers a good forum for interaction with professionals at work, supervisors and advisors. The practical learning gained by working alongside the competed professionals and supervisors is far much better than the learning obtained through reading books and other reference materials. The references concur with the fact that clinical rotations offer a better learning experience the theoretical learning in classes. Furthermore, reference materials differ from clinical rotation in that, reference materials do not offer hands-on experience on the use of different clinical types of equipment and facilities while clinical rotations observation depicts students practically seeing and using different clinical analytical types of equipment. Students undertaking clinical rotations have an upper hand on practical skills and theoretical knowledge while on the other hand; students undertaking no clinical rotation have more of the theoretical knowledge than the practical skill. Although the reference documents give the basis for the operations of the practical, the practical application of the skills gained in the classroom helps articulate the skills further and in a practical manner therefore, clinical rotations emphasize the practical practice.
Conclusion
Clinical rotation provides a profound learning process, which allows the application of the theoretical skills gained in the classroom. However, the observations drawn from the clinical rotations by the students agree greatly with the experience portrayed by the references used in assignment two. In most cases, the theoretical skills provided for in the classroom entail the basics of all the clinical operations but do not give the fine details on the actual steps and processes involved while on the other hand, the practical skills offer practical examples of how to carry out a clinical examination procedure. This helps the students to reduce medical errors and develop their practical skills to safeguard medical malpractices.