Volunteering at Bridge Substance Misuse Programme - Admission/Application Essay Example

Placement Report at Bridge Substance Misuse Programme Table of contents Background and purpose of the report 2 Objectives of my attachment 2 Organization culture and culture 3 Counselling department 4 Daily schedule 6 Responsibilities 6 Description of the completed tasks 7 Revise and update the information on the Bridge website about the Counselling residents. 7 Add Counselling faculty biographies, CVs and photos to the Bridge website. 9 Add an event schedule on the Bridge website. 9 Include counselling clinical trials on the website. 9 Include a page to the Bridge website having the information on department's mission statement, psychiatrist names, and a description on Counselling services. 9 Investigate and write information regarding Counselling specialty areas that were missing from the site. 10 Attend monthly forums so as to learn about Flatware Content Management system, the ways used to add information on the website and to know about the current available changes to the Rehabilitation centre websites. 10 Liaise with other departments at Bridge centre and other information specialists. 10 Challenges faced 10 INTRODUCTION Background and purpose of the report This report reports on the activities and I was involved in as an intern in Bridge Substance Misuse Programme during my attachment placement. During my attachment, I interacted with various departments of the Bridge Rehabilitation Centre and conducted a variety of activities for a period that is approximately one year. This section of this report contains a short general description of Bridge Substance Misuse Programme Centre and the various departments. It also contains a description of the activities that I was involved in during my placement period. In the facility, I was attached taking the role of a general volunteer. As a general volunteer I was not dedicated to only two sections of the centre. My placement took the turn of shifting and providing assistance to various sections of the centre for short periods before moving to the next. The sections that I worked in providing assistance included; the administration, the offices, activity support section, the reception and assisting the general staff and working with other volunteers in the facility. Objectives of my attachment Objectives of working as a trainee in centre was to enable me get some working experience which is a vital addition to my academic experience. The specific objectives of being attached to this organization include: i. To gain some skills so that I may be able to provide effective contribution in a work-bases environment ii. To gain first-hand knowledge of working in both the professional and social context and be able to evaluate their performance iii. Be able to focus on career aspirations and understand the specific career requirements with regards to one interest. iv. Be able to gain a work-based point of view and this will relate in improving our academic performance. v. To develop learn and enhance the key skills and attributes that are requires in the working environment, such skills include; special professional n technical skills, skills dealing with the interaction with people and self-reliance skills. Organization culture and culture Notably, this institution is a very busy and large clinical and rehabilitation centre with over 800 personnel. The institution is divided into many departments, offices and divisions in the locality and the city (Judith Canham, 2008, pg35). Moreover, the institution provides medical and counselling services through the city and adjacent town through their outreach mission. The mission statement for the organization is “provision of excellent healthcare for a healthy nation” notably; the purpose of the institution is to enhance rehab programme that is exclusive throughout the community. The institution has established a strong relationship with other rehabilitation centres and the criminal justice department in the region in providing volunteering work (Milton, 2010, pg27). Students from the university are expected to participate in community development before graduating, for at least once a term. Essentially, the vision of the institution is “becoming the rehab centre of choice” and establishes themselves as the best providers of rehabilitation services in the country. I had the privilege working with the marketing department of the institution and I was able to interact with the employees. I noted that the department comprises of 24 employees and five freelancers (Pearce, 2003, pg36). The department is a busy establishment and getting help is difficult; essentially, the department works hard in establishing a name and reputation of the organization. They are also responsible for increasing awareness on the products and services that the institution provides. The role of this department includes creating and maintaining websites, publishing, printing, and editing of marketing materials for the institution. I gathered that the department is project oriented and meeting deadlines is critical (Pearce, 2010, pg34). The department requires that the staffs are willing to adjust to procedures and processes. Counselling department I had the opportunity to work in this department and I was able to understand that the department is staffed largely compared to the marketing department. The employees of this department are 120 within four locations in the city. There are 20 full-time members of the faculty, 30 residents, 16 clinical, 14 clinical, the rest are administrative employees. Notably, I was attached to the administrative category. Technical department required an individual with a background in research, histotechnician, counselling, and medical assistance. This department is a busy one, unlike marketing department; however, the departments do require employees to work on strict deadlines. Working at administration department helped me to understand that the roles of the administrator are similar to office manager. For instance, the administrator helps in furthering the mission of Counselling department. This role entails providing patient care services, advocating for knowledge on Counselling, and creating awareness on this department (Wittmann, 2011, pg55). My mentor in this department, Patricia, was inspiring and helpful. He helped me in completing my responsibility an encouraged me to be successful in my endeavours. In this department, I worked on website and brochure updates. Other responsibility included dissemination and typing excision on operatives’ reports, as well as, referral letters. Moreover, Bridge Substance Misuse Programme work closely with other rehabilitation centres in providing consultancy and medical care services. This means that the institution has two different websites; the marketing department offering consumer information while clinical site providing information on rehabilitation. This means that the marketing department website controls most of the activities of rehabilitation centre (Timmins, 2008, pg32). On the other hand, the clinical site was created for users seeking information on diseases, psychiatrists, employment, as well as, events on the rehabilitation centre. Similarly, the website for the rehabilitation centre is created to provide information to students and members of the public, as well as, users seeking information on the rehabilitation centre (Thomlison, 2011, pg46). My assignment at the institution was to revise the websites. Notably, my responsibilities at the institution websites were activating the links, adding pages, revising pages, adding clinical trial information, as well as, calendar events. Conversely, pages that I attended included "find a psychiatrist," "Counselling page," "job search," and home page. Moreover, I attended training and seminars to sharpen my skills and enable me in executing my duties. Training was essential to enable me get access to password, attend web managers meeting, making revisions (Radcliffe Publishing, 2008, pg38). Moreover, this also enables me in interpersonal communication. Frequent communication with other departments was essential in completing my internship. The university website was essential in future recruitment of faculty, resident members, as well as, medical students. In essence, well maintained website is critical in increasing the number of staff and students. Consequently, this leads to expansion of quality services (Pfeiffer, 2012, pg26). In sum, my placement at the institution enriched my knowledge and expertise in editorial roles on website pages. Daily schedule Prior to starting my day, I do spend 5 hour copying, typing, and distributing referral letters, as well as, op reports. Notably, I do work on 50 op reports and 30 referral letters on a monthly basis. The operational reports explore all the procedures conducted by a psychiatrist or counsellor. My responsibility was to enter the operation reports and patient data on the database and merging the information. On the other hand, the referral letters describes the results of the clients such as, visits, psychiatrist referred to, and extend of disorder. In conclusion, the last 2-3 hours I work with the Dermatologic therapy journal. The duties entails filling and organizing the journals whose requirements entails record keeping of the manuscripts, publications, receipts, writing instructions, sending letters, and deadline reminders Responsibilities This chapter focuses on the web project as indicated above. My work consists mostly on small tasks that I was to complete in order to improve the Bridge website. Below there is a list of points that shows an overview of my work and thereafter, a brief description on each of the points. A list of proposed site revisions and tasks The below is a list that I and my mentor agreed to constitute my internship. To revise and update the information on the Bridge psychiatry website about the Counselling residents. Add faculty profile and activate links on the “find a psychiatrist” page on the Bridge website. Add Counselling faculty biographies, CVs and photos to the Bridge website. Add an event schedule on the Bridge website. Include counselling clinical trials on the website. Include a page to the Bridge website having the information on department’s mission statement, psychiatrist names, and a description on Counselling services. Investigate and write information regarding Counselling specialty areas that were missing from the site. Attend training sessions that are for making changes and scheduling events to various sites. Description of the completed tasks Below is a description of each of the above tasks that I completed and the status of the project at the time of report Revise and update the information on the Bridge website about the Counselling residents. The clinical site containing the Counselling residency page has been revised. From the statistics, we see that the number of Counselling clients has increased since 2005 and those residents have been included on the residency page (Azer, 2008, pg65). The deadlines on the residency applications have been revised and various attachment forms have been added including application forms. Now potential residents can log on to the site and view all their details (Kate Andre, 2010, pg44). I revised the information using Microsoft word, but I sent the revisions to the department of psychiatry to change these pages on the site. I did not access the residency webpages due to the reserve rights. Since Bridge has other several departments having medical residents, therefore, there is someone working exclusively with the residents (Anna Shillabeer, 2011, pg36). Add faculty profile and activate links on the “find a psychiatrist” page on the Bridge clinical site. Profile and photos have been added to the page "find a psychiatrist" for the new psychiatrists hired recently. Since May 2006, we have hired three new psychiatrists. These pages were added by Jeniffer Freeman in the marketing department. However, I was the one who typed the psychiatrist profile forms and scheduled appointments for faculty members to take their photos and then sent those details to Jennifer as they were (Aronson, 2011, pg65). I also added and activated links that interconnect the Counselling homepage and the faculty member profiles on the “find a psychiatrist” page. The home page briefly describes the clinic and Counselling services provided. For the first time, I used the Flatware communication management system (CMS) when activating the links and revising the pages previously mentioned. The system was very user friendly and similar to the Dreamweaver web design program that was used in the MTSC classes (Barker, 2013, pg30).It only requires a few steps to make revisions and save them since most commands in the program are in built. In one of our manager meetings, the marketing team gave us some basic HTML concepts which we would need them in the future (Asmussen, 2012, pg35). I later found out that it helps to know some HTML language though not necessary for this system. I typed the steps involved for using this system and gave them to pat. Add Counselling faculty biographies, CVs and photos to the Bridge website. Here I have written ten Counselling faculty biographies and revised CVs, and stored them in PDFs which are now on the university site. Since revisions to the Bridge Flatware CMS are still underway, Ken Quant decided to add them on the university site when Dr. Rhodes made an inquiry on them. The biographies and CVs spent most of my time while doing revisions. Add an event schedule on the Bridge website. I was trained for about an hour by Tony Seaman on adding a calendar of events on the website. I have been updating the topics, speakers and dates on the calendar pages once I receive updates from our residency coordinator. Each department web page manager at the CRI is mandated to update their calendar on any current information Include counselling clinical trials on the website. These are ongoing trials carried out by psychiatrists on clients (substance abusers) who volunteer to test certain products. I completed a form on the tests forwarded them to Tony DeMarco in the Research Clinical Trials Office, for him to add them on the web. It was my responsibility to check the web to ensure the information I gave him was correct after it went live. Include a page to the Bridge website having the information on department's mission statement, psychiatrist names, and a description on Counselling services. The departments' mission statement has been included in the site together with a full time list of faculty. The mission statement was the important part of all the web revisions and without a mission statement Ken could not have included our faculty CVs and bios on the centre’s site. As for the web page, he was either to include an introductory statement or a mission statement. Investigate and write information regarding Counselling specialty areas that were missing from the site. Attend training sessions that are for making changes and scheduling events to various sites. I attended training sessions so that I can be in a position to revise the Bridge site and also to add the calendar of events information. Since I would be having access to more web pages soon, I should be in a position to add the psychiatrists' bios, CVs and photos to the clinical site. Attend monthly forums so as to learn about Flatware Content Management system, the ways used to add information on the website and to know about the current available changes to the Rehabilitation centre websites. On every month I have been attending a Friday web forum with web page managers and Individuals from other departments who are interested in or involved with the Bridge websites Liaise with other departments at Bridge centre and other information specialists. I communicated to the marketing department to obtain the information and review the documents that were to be included on the web. Challenges faced My main role in the facility was operating as a general volunteer, this included working with different sections over short periods of time and this was quite a load of work. Among the challenges faced was encountered when different sections of the facility required my assistance at the same time. Working for a short period in one section was very helpful to me as I was able to gain knowledge of how different sections of the facility are able to operate and how they are linked and connected with others. However, this movement did not provide an avenue for me to fully understand the operations of different sections. On various sections, the time to move came before I fully understood the operations of the previous and had to be moved to the next. As a general volunteer work was based with interaction with different supervisors who are temporary in charge of your actions so in cases of problems or personal challenges there was a limitation since the time to transfer to the next department would come before one is assisted in the previous section. Solutions Facing obstacles in a working environment is a normal activity experienced by many interns and I could not be an exception. Finding a solution to the obstacles became very important as this was the only my attachment as an internee would be as fruitful as it was. On addressing my personal issues and problems I realized it was important to surplus my immediate temporary supervisor and deal with the general supervisor who was to some extent permanently places. Understanding the hierarchical flow of information was very vital as it allowed me to get my issues addressed. Not fully understanding the different sections operations fully before my movement paused as a challenge. On trying to find a solution to this I could take time and learn as much as possible in a given section. If the time for movement came before I was fully contented i would talk to my supervisor to provide an extension of time so that I become efficiently informed of the operations of the section Bibliography Anna Shillabeer, T. F. B. D. M. R., 2011. Evidence-Based Public Management: Practices, Issues, and Prospects. Michigan: M.E. Sharpe. Aronson, D., 2011. Evidence-Based Technical Analysis: Applying the Scientific Method and Statistical Inference to Trading Signals. New York: Wiley & Sons. Asmussen, K., 2012. The Evidence-based Parenting Practitioner’s Handbook. London: Routledge. Azer, S., 2008. Navigating Problem Based Learning. Manchester: Elsevier Health Sciences. Davis, S. (2006). Rehabilitation: The Use of Theories and Models in Practice. amsterdam: Elsevier Health Sciences. Dennis R. Maki, ‎. M. (2011). The Professional Practice of Rehabilitation Counseling. Newyork: springer publishing company. Gwen Robinson, ‎. D. (2009). Offender Rehabilitation: Theory, Research and Practice. new castle: SAGE. Judith Canham, J. B., 2008. Mentorship in Community Nursing: Challenges and Opportunities. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Martin, D. E. (2007). Principles and Practices of Case Management in Rehabilitation Counseling. springfield: Charles C Thomas Publisher. Milton, M., 2010. Therapy and Beyond: Counselling Psychology Contributions to Therapeutic and Social Issues. 2nd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Pearce, R., 2003. Profiles and Portfolios of Evidence. New York: Nelson Thornes. Pearce, R., 2010. Profiles and Portfolios of Evidence. London: Nelson Thornes. Pfeiffer, S. I., 2012. Serving the Gifted: Evidence-Based Clinical and Psychoeducational Practice. London: Routledge. Radcliffe Publishing, 2008. Evidence-based Care for Midwives: Clinical Effectiveness Made Easy. Boston: Radcliffe Publishing. Thomlison, B., 2011. The Evidence-Based Internship : A Field Manual: A Field Manual. Oxford University Press: Oxford. Read More