For Speech Language Pathologists, part of their training includes a clinical fellowship year (CFY) while most choose a specific specialty to spend their clinical year in, here are seven reasons why it makes sense to consider doing your CFY in home health, specifically, at KidsCare Home Health.
The Unique Advantages of a CFY in Home Health
Embarking on your Clinical Fellowship Year (CFY) is a significant step in your journey as a Speech Language Pathologist. While many choose to specialize in a specific area, there’s a compelling case to be made for the unique advantages of a CFY in Home Health. This path offers a rich, diverse, and rewarding experience that can shape your career in remarkable ways. Let’s delve into the unique benefits and opportunities that a CFY in Home Health presents, and why it might be the perfect choice for your fellowship year.
With a Fellowship Year in Home Health You Don’t Specialize
This creates a broader scope in terms of patients you see, ages, types of diagnoses, and much more. You’re getting to practice more on a multitude of different things.
The Value of One-on-One Time in Home Health
In home health, it’s you, your supervisor, and the patients. This gives you ample one-on-one time with not only your supervisor to be able to ask questions and learn from, but also with the patient and the treatment plans.
Parent Education and Family Dynamics in Home Health
You learn a lot about parent education in home health; working with different family dynamics, and different environments to give you a more well-rounded education.
Quick Progress and Relationship Building in Home Health
You see the fruits of your labor much quicker, the progress is typically much quicker, and your ability to create a relationship and develop relationship-making skills is much greater than those outside of home healthcare.
Access to Clinical Managers and Top-Tier Insight at KidsCare
Not only do you have a supervisor, but you also have access to Clinical Managers who help as well. This gives you insight into the well-rounded process. On top of Clinical Manager and supervisor access, at KidsCare specifically, we are owned and operated by therapists, so your access to top-tier insight and information is key here.
Free Continuing Education and Personal Development at KidsCare
We have free continuing education (CEU) through KidsCare including the feeding mentorship program and we have our personal development fund that you can use on outside CEUs as well.
Valuable Experience & Knowledge Gained
Your CFY year is similar to an intern year, you get time to try on a lot of specialties, work with kids of all different ages, and work to develop a network of managers, leaders, and other SLPs through this program.
Possible Downsides of Doing Your CFY in Home Health
While there are so many reasons to consider doing your CFY in home healthcare, one downside you might consider is because we are in the homes, we accommodate the schedules of the patients, which can sometimes be tricky. While it’s not much of a difference in terms of how long it takes you to get your hours, there’s a possibility that your typical CFY “year” might be a couple of months extended in order to get all of your hours.
A typical CFY plan allows you to get your hours somewhere like a school, where your CFY looks more like 9 months if you go the home health route, it would look more to around a year. This can also be controlled by the clinical fellow and how they can increase/decrease hours. Even on the downside, there is flexibility! Your supervisor will work to help you get as many hours as they can. The upside to that is this might be a more accommodating schedule to you as a parent, or in different stages of life.
Doing Your CFY at KidsCare Home Health
Your clinical fellowship year is a time for you to be able to apply all your student-learned skills to real, and applicable patients. What better way to be able to take what you’ve learned in a textbook and apply it to a plethora of different diagnoses and age-ranges? KidsCare offers benefits to CFs who are looking to do their CFY in home health including a personal development fund (PDF), a budget to pay for your license and access to both a supervisor and a clinical manager who can help you with learning how to build out plans of care, and a continuing education plan for yourself.
Your CFY year should be well-rounded and allow you access to multiple leaders. KidsCare does a great job of taking care of all of those needs. If you’re looking into home health as a CFY option and are interested in KidsCare’s offerings, reach out to therapyrecruiting@kidscarehh.com and our recruiting team can walk you through all the benefits of coming to KidsCare for your CFY!
