Since graduating college I can definitely say I have become a more confident and well-rounded person. I really feel like I have received the best education possible and I am ready to conquer the rest of my life. When I came into college I was a follower, and I was shy. Now I feel like my leadership skills have really grown. I am independent and do what I believe is right for me rather than relying on other people to make decisions for me. In terms of my career path I have also grown and changed a lot. I came into college wanting to be a physical therapist. All through high school I would say, “I want to be a physical therapist for athletes.” At the end of my first semester at Emory & Henry College I found out what I really wanted to be was an athletic trainer. I applied for the athletic training program as a shy, quiet, and hiding in the shadows freshman and have dramatically grown into the position of an athletic trainer. I have had some low points and I have had many high point in athletic training. I have learned a lot and I know that when I get my first job I will do very well.
My next steps are to get interviews for jobs and work in a college athletics setting. I know in the future I want to be a teacher. Being a teacher is something I believe comes naturally to me. I know this because even in high school I was able to teach a group of my peer and lead them in a saxophone ensemble. In college, I have been very successful in helping other in the anatomy and kinesiology class. I am able to help multiple people learn in a style the works best for them. So after a few years of working in a college I plan to start working on a master’s degree to further my athletic training education and get a EdD so I will be able to teach. I am so thankful for my college education. I am especial thankful for the liberal arts background because it has truly changed how I problem solve and work with other people. I am looking forward to my life after graduation. I am nervous and excited for the transition from student to athletic trainer. I have so many plans for my future and I am excited to be living my life in my own way.
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As I am preparing to graduate I am also preparing to find a job and get interviews. One of the most common interview question is, what is you great strengths and weaknesses? The last time I took a personality assessment it rated me on hundreds of personality traits. My top five personality traits I would also claim as my strengths which are Integrity, self -motivation, leadership, faith and curiosity. Integrity and faith are two strengths that I did not realize I had until taking this personality assessment. To me this means that I am true to myself and what I believe in. This can be reflected in my confidence in the athletic training clinic. I believe without these traits the athletic training profession would be tiring and wearing whenever I fail or did not do something completely right. Being faithful to myself and believing in myself is what will keep me strong and long lasting in the profession. This leads me to self-motivation and curiosity. You have to have these as strengths as an athletic trainer. You have to keep pushing yourself to find the next best thing that can be applied to medical practice. Because I am naturally self-motivated and curious I will always seek the best for myself, my patients, and whatever institution I am associated with. Finally, my last strength is leadership. I think this comes from the combination of all my other strengths. I have always been a natural leader. I believe leadership should come from within the group and should be led by example. I always seek to be an example therefore people naturally follow me and I will always help myself and other people find their version of success.
While these are my strengths, everybody has weaknesses. My weaknesses are that I am shy and I struggle to sell my skills. I have always been a shy and slow to warm up person. This is because I am an observer. I like to watch how everything is done, how other people react to certain things, and how I should be acting in a similar situation. While this does hinder me in terms of personal relationships, the end goal is always met. I will talk to people I need to talk to and I will form important relationships too. For me, it just takes longer because I like to take in all the information first. My other weakness is on that is hard to deal with, especially because all job interviews are is trying to sell your skills to someone. I think I find this hard to do because I do not like to brag on myself, but also because I struggle to get my point across on the spot. I just need a chance to prove myself in a non-verbal way. Because I can’t do this in an interview, the only thing I can do is to just keep practicing and have others give me feedback. At some point, my point and worth will get across to someone. In my athletic training 462 research and design class we have been working up all semester to learn how to critically appraise journal articles. We have learned about all the components of a journal article. The parts that I am struggling with are interpreting the statistics in the journals, but I’m slowly figuring it out. In terms of actually doing critical appraisal, we have not done one completely. So far we are learning how to use the Pedro scale. This was very confusing to me because the way it is being explained does not make sense to me when I read the criteria. I understand the concept of the Pedro scale, but being able to actually do it is difficult. I think if I can figure out all the components of critical appraisal and can practice it more I will do better. I do not believe I would have time to do this as a practicing athletic trainer. I think it is more important that I am able to understand where the data come from and how it should be used in clinical practice. Writing a critically appraised topic or paper seems like something I would not be interested in doing while I am in the clinic. I think reading from various sources and coming to my own evidence based decision is more important. I think it would be important for an athletic trainer who enjoys doing research because this would be able to help practicing athletic trainers know what article are high quality.
Last week I had a difficult conversation with one of my teammates who has been seeing our athletic trainer for an injury. He has a strange injury that for a while, the athletic trainers were not sure what was going on. At first we thought he just had shoulder impingement, but it was not responding to treatment very well. He was finally referred to our team doctor where there were neurological pathologies suspected. He went on to get some more testing don where it was found that he was in fact having a nerve pathology called parsonage turner syndrome. After this diagnosis he was told he needs to have surgery to fix it. At first he seemed uneasy about the surgery, but then he seemed to get comfortable with the idea that this needs to happen. This was until one day he came to make in frustration stating how he is going to refuse that surgery and does not care of the consequences because he does not want to lose all the time required for his shoulder to heal after the surgery. I tried to calm him down at first, but he was getting more irritated so eventually I had to match his intensity in order for him to understand me. I explained to him that he would rather lose the few months after his surgery to get better than to lose function of his arm and shoulder forever. I explained how miserable his life would be if he did not get the surgery because not only would he not be able to play golf ever again, but he wouldn’t even be able to put a shirt on by himself, or take a gallon of milk out of the refrigerator. Although he said he did not care at the time, I knew I was able to get into him that this surgery is necessary for him. I talked to him a few days later and he told me while he still does not like the idea, he is going to get the surgery. This made me happy to hear. I know he is scared if the surgery and how his golf game will be after, but I reassured him that he was making a good decision. This conversation showed me a lot about myself. I learned that sometimes you need to be aggressive with a patient to have them understand that an option would be better for them in the long run. I also learned that sometimes, you have to fight for your patient because they cannot or do not know how to fight for themselves. Surgery can be really scary for patents and the will have some low point throughout the process. Being able to keep them motivated and understanding of their condition is important for not only helping them now, but helping them be healthier in the future.
This year the National Athletic Training Month slogan is “ATs are Health Care.” This promotes athletic training because it reinforces the idea that we are more than just water and tape. We do so much more and it really makes people think about all the things we do. I like the fact that they use AT instead of athletic trainer because it is easy to say and also gets rid of the mind set of people calling us trainers. The slogan is also modified this year to where it can say “ATs are Performance Health Care” and “ATs are Military Health Care” and other slogans. I like the fact that they did this also because it lets people know we are everywhere and we help more than just sports. It makes us seem more diverse of health care clinicians.
The way I have been embodying this slogan is when people ask me what I major in I tell them everything we are capable of and all the places we can work. Usually, people are impressed by how much we are able to do and I am able to give them a new perspective on athletic training. I have done this a couple times. One time I was put on the spot by a faculty member of Emory & Henry College to tell a CEO of one of the software the school uses about athletic training. He had no idea what it was and he was happy to know more about what I did. Other times I promote athletic training are when I have been strict with coaches and teachers who ask if there is a trainer around. I kindly correct them. Usually, they want something for me and I can make it a joke and I will say, “I’ll get it for you if you say AT or Athletic trainer.” Then they laugh and most of the time they don’t do it again when I am around. Some things that the program is doing to promote Athletic training month is creating videos to be played on campus and on social medias. I am going to be making a video talking about my summer internship with a performing arts group to show how important it is to have health care for those individuals. I believe this slogan is a really good one that can get a lot of people on board with the message and It makes people think about the care they get from athletic trainers. This week I was doing clinical hours for a softball game. We were waiting for the away team to arrive. We had received extensive care plans for the athletes to do before the game. Unfortunately, their bus broke down on the way and we had limited time to treat the away team. We met them outside to tape them on the benches and then they went to warm up. These’ s girls were already grateful for the athletic training staff. Many of them made comments that we are awesome and we do really great taping and we actually care for them, instead of other colleges who do poor jobs just to get them through. The girls continued to mention how many of their teammates had been injured throughout the week in pretty tragic ways. One had a patella dislocation while batting, a few had sprained their ankles, and four got into a car accident where they were lucky to get a few scratches and concussions. Needless to say they had gone through a rough week. They were looking forward to this game however and they were in high spirits. I had volunteered to be in the away dug out for the first game. Things were going smoothly. They had a good lead through most of the game. Then another one of their teammates had a serious injury. She hit a double and slid into second base. Next thing I know she was screaming and not getting up. The certified athletic trainer and I quickly ran out to her and we saw a gross malalignment of her ankle. It was clear she had dislocated and a had various fractures of her lower leg. The head athletic trainer held her stable while I splinted her and had the coaches call 9-1-1. After she was splinted, I ran out to the road to go wave down the ambulance. They got to the field quickly and transported her to the hospital where they relocated her and she was sent home for surgery. The rest of the day was emotional for the girls. This is definitely one of the more intense injuries I have been able to assist and I was left on edge. The way I stayed calm was the fact that I knew I did everything right and the girl is going to be okay. While it is unfortunate the girl had such a bad injury, I am grateful I was able to experience this before I graduated. If I ever see it again, I will be more experienced now and I will be able to help my athlete better the next time this happen.
This week there was a women’s basketball game which I was covering. The opposing team did not being an athletic trainer, so I was made responsible for the team with the supervision of my athletic training preceptor. The game went on and there were three minor injuries sustained by the team that I was responsible to take care of. The first girl had been poked in the eye and came of the court. I examined her eye looking for any bleeding, scratches, loss of function, and loss of movement. The only thing I saw was that her eye was irritated, but there was nothing in it. She could still see fine and only said it burned a little, but nothing else was bothering her. I was mostly concerned with her being able to see, but since she could still see fine then I let her return to play. The second injury was a thumb jam. I palpated, did some ligament testing, and did the tap test to rule out fractures and sprains. All test I did were negative. She wanted to get some ice on it, but I knew she would have to go in again because there was still a good portion of the game. I instructed her that having ice one it now wouldn’t help her and she could get some after the game. She finished the game out and got ice after. There was no swelling, redness or deformity. She was mostly just tender and irritated in the MCP joint. The final injury I actually did not see happen. All the girls had run down the court and I was looking over there. I noticed my preceptor walking towards me and she pointed to one of the opposing team’s girl laying face down on the ground. I immediately ran out to her on the court. I did a primary survey to see if she was breathing. Once she was talking I knew it was not too serious. The athlete reported landing on another girl’s foot and told me her ankle was hurting. She was able to roll over on to her back where I did a quick eval to rule out fractures. I first palpated and then did a bump test. All were negative. I then did a talar tils and an anterior drawer which were both positive. I then got her off the court with an assisted walk. I did some more palpation with her shoe off. She was point tender on the Posterior talofibular ligament and the calcaneal talofibular ligament. I then gave her ice. When the game ended she was able to walk back to her locker room, although she was slightly limping. She reported she was having issues with this all season, and she seemed very upset.
Overall, I think I handled everything appropriately and to the best of my ability. Although I did not initially see the athlete I was responsible for go down, I still feel like I did everything correct. My preceptor did not have to correct me or remind me of anything to do, nor did she feel the need to double check. Although this is a simple injury and is clear I should definitely have mastery over an ankle sprain; doing it and not having to be corrected on anything and knowing I did everything right made me feel good. I even got a few compliments from parents and spectators who said I handled her injury very professionally. This just boosted my confidence and excites me for my future. Especially now since I am in process of applying for jobs. Trust is important in a relationship between patient and healthcare provider. This is especially true with athletic training because it is very possible that the only time you are officially meeting someone is at the lowest point of a patient’s career. Gaining the trust between your population is important because if they trust you they are more likely to be corporative and attentive which can lead to better outcomes for the patient. Trust important in patient outcomes because it make the patient engaged. If there is no trust, then the patient may decide to not come for therapy appointments. This could lead to some serious deficits in the patient and they will never fully recover. Creating trust and keeping rehabs interesting, fresh, and new are essential to keeping patients engaged and aware so they can make a full recovery from their injury. Some of the easiest ways I believe you can gain trust with you patient is having knowledge on things that the age group of the population is into. Taking interest in them as a person and the hobbies they like will open them up to conversations which will gain their trust. If possible, having a meeting where you can introduce yourself and describe your role in the facility or for the population could help the patient population understand you more and make them more likely to report their own injury to you rather than having a coach or employer mandate them to come see you. Another way I think an athletic trainer can build trust in their patients is by giving a through explanation of what happened to them, how what you are doing works, and how you will help their injury. I believe this can calm a lot of their fear and answer a lot of questions which will help the patient trust you and know they are in good care. Overall, a good patient relationship is stemmed from trust and there are ways to improve the trust to have successful outcomes.
I will sit for my Board of Certification exam in March. So far, I have taken 3 practice exams. In preparation for them I have been looking over my textbooks which heavily look over rehabilitation and therapeutic progressions. I also plan to look over some specifics of emergency care and modalities. I feel once I am up to par on these areas of the practice I will be very ready for the Board of Certification exam. On my first practice exam I did pretty well. I scored an overall score of 73.44. I did well on all domains except for domain 4. There I scored a 59.57 and I knew I would have to work hard to improve my score in this area. Since my first practice exam I have improved my score to a 63.5 and most recently a 77.14. I plan to continue my improvement because I am aware some tests do not emphasis domain 4 as heavily. I know I still have a good way to go to be the best I can for the exam. While domain 4 is my weakness, I have a strength in domain 3 and I do fairly solid in domain 1 and domain 5. I plan to review a few items of budgeting and items pertinent to domain 1 to strengthen these areas further. My overall score on my most recent exam was a 79.4 which I was super excited about. It made me feel more confident than I have with my other two exams. While I definitely have some areas to work on, I feel confident that I will pass the Board of Certification exam.
My final year semester in the athletic training program feels strange. I am going to miss my preceptors, professors and peers. At the same time, I am excited and anxious to put to use what I have been studying and practicing. My final semester I do not have very many Athletic Training courses: only Research & Design and Clinical. Another class I am taking that will still be relevant to athletic training is Abnormal Psychology. I am going to focus most of my attention on these courses to get the most out of them and top off my undergraduate Athletic Training knowledge to the best of my ability. In the clinic, I am mostly focusing on being confident with my decisions and trying to smooth out my processes. I want athletes feel more confident in my ability so they feel comfortable and satisfied with the care they are getting. This semester my goals are: I will prepare for the Bard of Certification exam by doing 5 questions from a Board of Certification prep book a day; I will improve my Board of Certification therapeutic interventions score by reviewing therapeutic interventions and appropriate progressions weekly with my preceptor; in addition to being fully responsible for at least one patient's entire rehab; I will improve the quality and technique of my evaluation skills by doing or simulating at least one evaluation every time I am in the clinic. If I can stick to these goal and improve my weaknesses before I graduate I will feel very confident in entering the profession and practicing in a new setting. Accomplishing these goals will also set me up to achieve my long term goals such as passing my Board of Certification Exam, getting into the grad school of my choice, and being hired as a Certified Athletic Trainer. In my last semester I am focusing hard to strengthen my weakness. I also want to have fun and enjoy my last semester with my friends and celebrate us all in the end when we have achieved are goals, and are on the path of life long success.
This semester was a really tough on for me in many aspects. I had a rough time with my health, my friends, and my academics. This is just another example of me persevering and pushing through a difficult time in order to make my number one priorities happen. My primary purpose is to get my education and become a certified athletic trainer. This semester I felt like my classes were all okay, but physiology was a bit harder than I expected it to be, and I had a large amount of stress from my connections class due to the amount of reading required for it. In terms of athletic training, I felt like I did okay, but nothing exceptional. I think this was due to the environment created by my preceptor. I had a lot of high hopes coming into this semester especially after my internship. I felt like I was ready to go and work on my own. Unfortunately, that is not a reality yet, and I have to work under someone and get their approval. The feedback I got from my preceptor was that I need to be more confident in my evaluations. I think this is a fair critique for me. I think I sometimes showed a lack of confidence, but this was because I wanted my preceptor to approve it before I go onto the next step. I only do this because I thought that is what my preceptor wanted me to do, but not I am not so sure. I felt like I had a lot of missed opportunities this semester. While I had some good time at the rugby matches, I did not get as much experience in the clinic as I wanted. In terms of my goals I set out this semester, I did not reach most of them. I wanted to improve my rehabilitation skills by having a few athletes of my own that I would be solely in charge, yet still under supervision of my preceptor. I did not get this opportunity. Going into the spring I am going to push my challenges of this semester behind me. I have a lot to look forward to and some great achievements to be made. I am planning to put in a lot of effort to refine my skills. I know I will be able to get more rehabilitation opportunities as well so I look forward to getting better at making effective and original rehabs for my athletes.
This week I was able to do my clinical hours under a different preceptor because my primary preceptor does not have many hours right now. Instead, I was able to clinically experience with the athletic trainer who is over the men’s and women’s swim team and baseball. This was nice because I have not had many rehab hours this semester, and she gets a lot of baseball rehabs with a good amount for swim pre-treatments. I was able to see a baseball player on Wednesday and make his rehab for Friday which I got to work with him again. He is working on strengthening his posterior muscle to correct his posture and help his pitching. It is also suspected that he may have a small SLAP tear and the athletic trainer is taking precautions with that as well. The rehab I made consisted of a warm up on the upper body ergometer followed by some stretching. Then I had him do sky punches, gunslingers, banded ABC’s and perturbations. I really enjoyed getting to work on this rehab. The patient is really easy going and works hard on his rehab. This was also good timing because I was finishing up a project to calculate how much revenue I could generate over two weeks. I was happy to have more patient contacts this week then I have had most of the semester. I feel like it gives me a closer representation on my worth-value study than if I were to only have a few patient contact for the whole two weeks. While the shoulder is not my favorite to evaluate, I really enjoy doing rehabs. It’s very different from the ankle or hip which have been my primary rehabs that I have been a part of. If I had to choose my favorite part of the body to eval and rehab I think I would go with the ankle and wrist. These are just two areas that the anatomy makes more sense in my head so it is easier to find what is wrong and how to fix it.
Of the five domains of athletic training I feel that domain three and domain one are my strengths and domain four is my weakness. Domain one is prevention of injuries and domain three is immediate emergency care. I believe I do well in these two domains because I have always been interested and engaged in these topics of health care even when I was in middle school. I believe I just have a natural ability to learn these skills and have them stick. In my mind I almost prioritize these domains because I can practice and come up with rehabs as long as I want, but I do not have time to research the best way to handle an emergency situation. Something I believe helps me in domain one and three is that it is almost common sense and I have to make it a force of habit.
Domain four is about therapeutic rehabilitation. I would not say I am terrible at rehabs, but I do struggle with coming up with exercises. I know in my head what needs to be fixed, but coming up with new and interesting exercises and progressing them at the right time is something I struggle with. That is why this semester I made it my goal to be engaged with a few rehabs and be in control of them, but it seems there was a lack of athletes with long term injuries that I was able to interact with. Maybe I should have been more proactive and asked to be involved with another preceptor’s athlete. Another one of my goals that I geared to helping this domain is practicing manual muscle testing. I think it is important to be able to isolate specific muscles in order to strengthen them. I think my rehab skills will become more developed overtime. I think what I struggle with the most is that I never want the athlete to feel bored or disinterested so I try to come up with exercises that are new, but I do not necessarily know what else to do. In terms of other parts of therapeutic rehab, I believe my knowledge in modalities is very sufficient and my technique in manual therapy is fairly strong. So I do not think I am a lost cause in domain 4, but I need more hands on opportunities to have my own rehabs and be in charge of them from the time of injury all the way through full recovery when possible. My favorite part of clinical this semester has been doing clinical experience with the rugby team and educating the players on what we do as athletic trainers and how we are supposed to be there to support them as a team. It has been very interesting to watch them go from being a small group of guys who have never had an athletic trainer before or even knew what we were to being able to have two full teams to practice with and having players from other sports who know what an athletic trainer is and how we are here to help them. My preceptor and I have played a large role in teaching the rugby team the culture we as athletic trainers have. Over the course of the semester we have taught the team the essentials of prevention for their sport. It was extremely stressful for the first rugby game when there was a huge miscommunication. We got out to the field and the whole team walked up to me and the head athletic trainer to be taped and braced, mean while we had been sitting in the athletic training clinic for 2 hours before their game waiting for them to come in to tape them. After this first game we were able to better communicate to the team that we are in the clinic before their games and practices to prepare them for their activity. It had to be heavily enforced that they would be able to receive more and better care if they were to come in beforehand as well. While it took a few weeks for the players to truly understand what we were trying to convey to them, they now have the understanding and many of them will come into the athletic training clinic before and occasionally after practice and games for treatments. This has been special for me because it gave me many opportunities to promote the profession, talk to coaches, and practice being a professional. This also gives me more opportunities reach my clinical goals. There has not been anyone with chronic injuries in rugby for me to have any as a long term patience and be in charge of their rehab, but as more of them become understanding and reliant on our service I am positive there will be someone who will be a more chronic case for me to work on and build my experience with.
As a senior athletic training student it is important to demonstrate professionalism. This prepare me for when I am in the work force. A way I demonstrate professionalism is by acting as a responsible student and acting as a rational person in the athletic training clinic. I believe it is important to treat my clinical hours and my school work as my job. While I know it is always different transitioning from school to clinical practice in the work force, I believe me treating school as a job prepares me to be better and have a smoother transition. It teaches me to have discipline and work the long hours needed to be an athletic trainer. Another way I model professionalism is by always speaking positively of athletic training. Athletic training is what I want my career and future to be. Being able to understanding athletic training to the fullest potential and speaking positively of the profession is a good way to show respect for the career. I also highly advocate for athletic training by telling everyone what athletic training is able to do, if they should see an athletic trainer if they are injured, and encouraging others too look for a career in athletic training.
I have been a mentor for younger students in the past. Here I showed them the ropes of the program and helped in the clinic and in the classroom as needed. The most recent thing I do as a role model and resource for other students is being a supplemental instructor for the applied anatomy and kinesiology class. I highly excelled in this class so it makes sense that I am able to help other in this more difficult class. I have found that I am a good teacher. I am able to explain concepts in many different ways for people to understand and I can often come up with tricks to remember ideas better. I am also able to adapt to many people’s different learning styles. I believe being a supplemental instructor gives me the ability to reach out to more students and show and example of what a good athletic training student should be like. It also gives me an opportunity to find the future of athletic training and hopefully set them up on a path for success. |
This is where I do my weekly clinical blog assignment. There is either a prompt I am responding to, or I just talk about something exciting I saw during the week.
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April 2019
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