I was a first-year student at the Faculty of Medicine in Cluj-Napoca, Balneophysiokinetotherapy and Medical Recovery profile. I had to follow the specialized practice during the summer and so I chose to learn what it means to be a physiotherapist at the Maria Beatrice Center in Alba Iulia. Since then I knew that the perfect place to learn and develop was here.
After graduating from college, I came back and submitted my CV, after the two weeks of trial, I was accepted, I was so excited that I wanted to scream out loud that “I did it, I really did it!”.
Starting the next day, I entered the “Great Session” together with all the therapeutic, medical and management staff. Here the case managers and the intervention team for each individual child are established, the evaluation reports are presented, the common objectives in the therapeutic approach, the developments and personalization of the therapeutic program, recommendations at home are presented. The meetings are led by rotation by the eleven team-Leaders, people with experience in the Center’s activity for over 10 years.
I entered a “factory”, I got all sweaty. There were tons of information and I had a thousand thoughts, if at a certain moment it is just you with the child and the parent and there will be a question you don’t know how to answer, if during the evaluation you don’t manage to test everything you set out to do, if the baby is crying and you can’t calm him down and all kinds of similar thoughts, I didn’t feel “warm” at all.
Then I found out that the therapeutic evaluation is done in a standardized way, on pre-set test batteries from the pre-assessment phase of the child, before his arrival at the center and that I don’t do anything on my own, everything happens in an organized setting, verified and my colleagues support me because they need a trained therapist they can rely on!
These people and now I have created a group personality based on the principle “your business is ours, everyone’s and everything that concerns us concerns you” because we all have to pull in the same direction. “Here you can’t stay behind, you rise together with us”, because the parents of these children invest you with trust and with all their hope when they put their child in your arms, and the level is of high consciousness because “we here change destiny”.
I’m Alina Petaca, physiotherapist at the Maria Beatrice Center, and I’m getting closer to what I want to become!
