Now that I have nearly finished my first year in the program, I feel like I have gained so many new experiences and relationships. This week I was back with my primary preceptor and I feel like our relationship and work ethic has improved. At the beginning of the semester Melissa and I were pretty decently friendly and worked well together. Now, I consider Melissa a great friend and an amazing teacher. I wouldn’t have survived this semester without Melissa. She has been the biggest help for me when studying for tests and practicals. She gives me the most freedom in the clinic. All the evaluations I have done this semester were under Melissa’s supervision. It was my goal to improve my evaluation skills, and even thought I did not accomplish that in the way I said I would, I know I am much better at them. I think the only thing that has changed from the begging of the semester to now is that I don’t feel like a student. Previously I felt like everything I did, the preceptors were hand holding, which may have been necessary at the time. Now the preceptors let us have more freedom. They let us decide how to treat patients, and let us modify exercises, and let us create rehab programs. I think it is nice and respectful that the preceptors have given us these responsibilities.
The highlight of this week was when I was clinically experiencing softball practice on Friday. The team was doing their throwing warm up and the all the sudden a player was bent over. A ball had taken a bad bounce and hit her straight in the nose. It started bleeding immediately. We all ran out with the kit and Melissa determined it was broken. One of the AT’s drove her to the hospital where they confirmed her nose was broken. About 20 minutes later the players were doing a scrimmage type scenario and a player hit a line drive straight between the first and second basemen. The right fielder was going for it. The ball finally bounced and hit the right fielder in the jaw. Again we ran out to check her out. She was fine that time. But then this same player was batting. She fouled a ball and it hit her straight in the foot. When she came into the AT room after practice we did a bump test and used a tuning fork on her which were both positive. We gave her a walking shoe and we are sending her for an X-ray soon. Finally, another player comes into the AT room and is complaining of shin and ankle pain. Melissa did ROM and Kleiger’s and none of them had pain. Then I did a bump test, and she nearly jumped off the table because it hurt so bad. So we gave her a walking boot and we will be sending her for testing as well. Needless to say it was a very eventful day of practice. This week I did not get any masteries or attempts, but I am filling out my clinical packet and so far, I seem to be on track.
0 Comments
My athletic training student mentor is Lauren. At the beginning of me being in the program she showed me a lot of techniques and helped me a lot, but now that I am able to do so much, I don’t feel like I need to rely on her to show me things. I think we work well as a mentor-mentee relationship because I can have my independence, but I know if I need help with anything she will be there for me. The one big thing I learned from Lauren is how to be a graceful clinician. She makes everything look so easy and gentle and it’s amazing to watch her in action. I think Lauren is going to be a great physical therapist because of that quality. One thing Lauren really helped me out with was studying for some of my Upper and Lower practical’s. I think she specifically helped me with the cervical spine practical. She showed me a way to remember some special test and it was very helpful. Also, a big help was when I asked her how she was doing her clinical question last semester. For some reason our whole sophomore class didn’t know there was an outline we had to follow and were about to submit our work in the wrong format. Because I asked her how she was formatting it, not only did that save me, but she saved the whole sophomore class once I told them about it.
A highlight from this week is that I did my Imaging rotation. I saw some pretty cool stuff there. I will talk more about it on my Clinical Experience page. We had and In-service with Dr.Handy and he talked about alternative treatments. One of the things that stuck with me was the yoga breathing exercise he taught us. I have been using it a lot to wake myself us when I feel tired in the middle of the day, and when I am stressed out because I have a million of papers to write that I can’t get myself to stop procrastinating on. Finally, I observed a tennis match over the weekend and I had a good time watching it this time since I wasn’t freezing to death. There was this one girl on the other team who I couldn’t stop looking at because of her shoulders. I wanted to take a picture because it was so strange, but that is just rude. Her AC joints were stick out so much, that at first when I looked at her, I thought she has some kind of large cyst on her shoulder. That was until I noticed it was Bilateral, and then I noticed I could prominently see her humeral heads. She seemed to be a healthy weight so I was very confused to see her shoulders looking like that. I assume it doesn’t have any functional effects on her considering she and her partner won their doubles match. This week I had a hand and wrist practical. After I receive my test back I will have a definite number, but I estimate I got about 25 masteries this week. |
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.
Archives
April 2019
|