Chloe Wandell

Narrative Self-Assessment
Year 1

Throughout the past academic year, I have experienced great personal and professional

learning and development. I have grown as a clinician and have gained confidence in my skills,

especially throughout my 6-week clinical experience. My grades improved from semester to

semester and I was able to apply the information I had previously learned to new concepts.

There was an adjustment period from undergrad to this program, but I was able to adapt my

learning style in order to be successful. I have also grown professionally, which I noticed when I

had to have conversations with patients and other physical therapists during my clinical

experience. My documentation skills and confidence in billing were also helped along

tremendously during my clinical. Having the constant feedback from my CI was a great

confidence boost and helped to allow me to see the things we had learned in the classroom in a

real-life setting.

The artifacts I have included in my portfolio represent my learning and development

over the course of the last academic year. I have included my resume, PTSO certificates, various

volunteer and social experiences, and many pictures throughout my time in both Mt Pleasant

and Houghton. I have pages to cover professionalism, my commitment to learning, and my

scholarly works. I included my CPI from my midterm and final week at my clinical with my CI’s

comments so as to show feedback that I was given and how I adapted after. I think having spent

more time working on my portfolio recently will make me more aware of potential

opportunities in the upcoming year to add to my clinical skills.

 In the past year, I have made many discoveries about my learning style/preferences. The

first summer semester was a wakeup call and forced me to reevaluate how I had been going

about my education. I have found that the courses that require us to sit and listen to lectures

for extended periods of time hinder my learning. I prefer courses that have a variety of learning

styles. I enjoy the demos and then having hands on experience ourselves. My learning and

development were also facilitated through group work and group studying to be able to talk

concepts through with my classmates. Even though I consider lectures to hinder my learning, I

have still found ways to keep myself engaged in the material and retain the information in a

way that makes sense to me. Another way my education has been facilitated is with the smaller

class size in the Houghton cohort. I feel that as someone who is more introverted, I am able to

ask questions and be heard/understood better than if I were in a bigger class size.

Areas I believe I need further development in and can continue to grow in are my

confidence with clinical skills, neurological and acute settings, and manual therapy techniques. I

had some introduction to manual therapy throughout the first year of PT school and then again

during my clinical experience, but I still have more to expand on. I also realized while making

my portfolio that I do not have a ton of pictures of me in a professional setting so I plan to be

better about documenting the activities I participate in outside of school. I look forward to the

upcoming year and seeing the person and clinician I continue to turn into, as well as all of the

opportunities we will have to continue progressing our learning and development.