This week’s blog prompt is,” Reflect on your progress on one of your unique clinical goals, other than completion goal.” So I will talk about my goal on evaluation proficiency. My goal is, “I will become proficient at doing evaluations by attempting or practicing at least 1 a week.” I most definitely have not done an eval a week. I guess it wouldn’t be impossible to do, but it would be difficult to find a teacher or upperclassmen to do this with once a week. That being said, I feel fairly confident in doing an eval. I have done 2 real clinical evals and several practice evals in my upper extremities class this semester. Each time I do one I feel like I do it better and more accurate. Thinking back to last semester, I remember one day in the clinic when the AT asked me to do a lower back eval and my class hadn’t even covered the knee yet; I kind of freaked out, and did not know what I was doing. I can compare that to the first eval I did this semester on the hip and even though I got stuck at some point, I was much better off. I can continue to compare this to the Elbow practical I took this Friday, and think that have been my best practical so far. I feel like I was actually palpating this time around instead of just poking a pointing to areas. Although I am not necessarily following through with my goal, I think the purpose of having this goal is still being achieved. Evaluations are a skill that builds up over time, and I can only see myself continuing to progress.
This week I did my Physical Therapy Out-patient clinic observations in addition to my normal clinical hours. I thought this was pretty fun. It was kind of like our clinic x10. I saw a variety of different patients from, post total joint surgery to stroke patients learning how to walk again. I think the highlight of being there was when the PT was showing me a model of the total knee repair, and I asked what the surgeons do with the ACL and PCL and she did not know so we had to look it up. Apparently, the product the surgeons put on the knee is secure enough to where the joint does not slide all over the place. I’m not going to lie; I was pretty proud of myself for asking a question they didn’t know. All in all, it was a good experience to go to the PT clinic. I’m not sure if it clarified if I would want to work there myself. Parts of it seem fun and interesting, but I also like the more live action that happens when working in a college setting. I think working in a PT clinic is something I would do after I lived my happy glory days in a college setting. For more detail on the PT clinic, I will be posting another post on my Clinical Experience tab. Like I said earlier, I took an elbow practical this week. Once I get my score back I will have an official number of masteries, but I could guess I got about 25 masteries.
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This year the NATA slogan is, “Your protection is our priority.” This promotes Athletic Training because it lets our athletes know they are important. If our athletes think they are important they are more likely to appreciate us and tell other people about how important we are to them. Therefore, helping spread the word about how awesome athletic trainers are. This slogan is significant because it sets a mindset for AT’s to achieve.
This week I got 2 attempts. This semester I feel like I am doing pretty good at keeping on top of my clinical packet. Every time I take a test I fill out the attempts and masteries I have completed. A lot of the skills I am learning are from the evaluation of the upper extremities course which we take a test about every 3 weeks. This gives me a minimum of 30 masteries when we get the tests back. We have taken 2 tests so This gives me nearly 80 masteries. I have an additional 10 from tapping skills. In total I have close to 100 masteries out of 173. I didn’t realize how well I was doing until I just counted while writing this post. I feel like I don’t have to worry as much as I did last semester because of the way I have been entering in my attempts. Last semester, I waited up to the last 4 weeks before the packet was due to fill out a majority of the packet. That was a seriously hellacious experience that I hope to never experience again. Although It would be simple to just do the skills from Upper Extremities, I do want to get masteries from other classes in order to better prepare me for the comprehensive exit exam at the end of the semester. I feel like last semester, even though I had a good range of skills I didn’t truly retain this knowledge. I think this is because I didn’t take notes in my clinical book. I have been trying to write notes on a lot more pages this go around because I think it will be easier to study at the end of the semester. Instead of having to go searching into several different text books I will just be able to look into my clinical packet and have all the information. The only downfall is that the packet is collected at the end of the semester and it goes into a deep dark abyss of a filing cabinet in which I will never see it again. So in order to avoid putting all this work into having a mini textbook and never getting to keep it, I have been typing some of the notes into a document which I will build up over the semesters. I think it will be pretty cool to look back on when I am a senior.
This week I got 10 attempts. |
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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