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.
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This semester my most challenging class is physiology. I was really excited for this class at the beginning of the year and I still am really enjoying it, but dang is it hard. I think what is so difficult about it is that everything is on a microscopic and chemical level and my brain functions more on the big picture cause and effect level. I have been doing well with class participation and I feel like when Dr. Fleet is lecturing I understand, but when I come to taking a test, the end results have not been so great. I think some of this might be because of my study techniques. Usually, my method works for other classes but it has not been for this class. My typical study technique is to look at my notes and review alongside a textbook. This did not work too great for the first test so the second test I tried to review my notes and fill in a study guided, I also increased my amount of time I study for this test and increased when I started studying for it. This test grade was lower than my first one. The way I have been coping with this class is by talking with Dr. Fleet and identifying strengths and weaknesses before I take the test. I also look over what went wrong after the test. I have another study method that I am going to try for our last test coming up. After we finish a chapter in class I will read my text book and my notes over again and work on the study guided as we cover it in class. Then after we finish the chapter I will go in and meet with Dr. Fleet to make sure I am understanding things the way I will need for the test. There is another project in the class that I know is going to help my grade a lot so I am not super worried. However, in order to get the grade I really want in this class, I am going to have to do better on our final test. I am hopeful that my new strategy will be beneficial.
My clinical question is in endurance athletes what is the most effective program to prevent medial tibial stress syndrome?
I decided I wanted to pursue this question after my internship experience with DCI. Many injuries and pain the performers had were due to medial tibial stress syndrome and a few of these injuries progressed to injuries more strenuous such as stress fractures. Among 150 members, each day I saw on average 40 members with complaints of lower extremity pain. The main complaints of the members were calf pain and shin splints, arch issues, iliotibial friction syndrome, and hip flexor tightness. My clinical placement this semester is with cross country and cheer and dance. Both of these sports are also more likely to have lower extremity injuries and for cross country it is very likely that at some point in their lives they have experienced shin splints. I believe this research will result in a beneficial strategy for these groups of athletes to prevent lower extremity injury. My ultimate goal with this is to come up with a prevention program that I can suggest to other DCI medical staff and athletic trainers to help prevent lower extremity injuries such as medial tibial stress syndrome. My investigation committee is Beth Funkhouser, ATC, Joe Lynch, ATC, and Mike Caro, CSCS. I chose these people to be a part of my committee because they are all heavily involved in literature and I know they will be beneficial when it comes to finding evidence and journals. I specifically chose Mike Caro as my content expert because he is highly competent in creating prevention programs himself so he must have evidence to support his practice. I am excited to work on this PIO question and to ultimately turn it around into something beneficial for clinical practices. Often times when students are in the clinic there may be times where a preceptor does something one way and it will be completely different from what the student has read in a textbook or has experience with other preceptors or clinicians in the past. I think when this happens it is important to not freak out and automatically assume what they are doing is wrong. A way I like to approach this difference is by asking the preceptor or clinician how they found this technique and what resources they have used. This to me is a good way to learn a new technique or skill. However, they are times where I find myself seriously questioning if what the preceptor is doing is truly effective or achieving the goal they have explained. In this case I would go and ask another preceptor if they can explain it to me. As a student I would never want to over step a preceptor’s way of practice, but If I found something they are doing wrong after looking into everything by text and by other clinicians then I might ask about the technique described in the text. Preceptors are people too and they make mistakes. I wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone. I believe if I just ask about what the texts say and they are actually doing something wrong this would make the preceptor go back into their textbooks and references and hopefully he or she would make the correction. Most importantly to me as a student I wouldn’t want to offend and over criticize the way someone practices. If at the end of the day someone will not change and they are truly wrong, then you just have to ignore it to the best of your ability and cover yourself in case something bad were to occur and there is a legal pursuit.
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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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