I was able to work with an amazing CI during my 2700 clinical rotation. His name was Gregory Martinez, PT, DPT. He taught me a great deal about how an outpatient physical therapist works and allowed me to be able to work on many patients with many different functional limitations. This job really tested my ability to think on the fly but to also consider many aspects of treatment. We individualized every single person's program everyday. I originally thought about how it was overkill to do that for a patient. Then I was able to work for a day at a clinic for the same company while my CI had to be out of the office for the day. They gave great care, but every patient had very similar exercises every time they came in and they saw so many patients that the PTA could not give full attention to the exercises that they were being given to do. Yes, they were able to work on patients and focus on manual therapy, however I feel we need to be focussed not just on the manual skills but the exercises and interventions the patent is getting because the work we do is skilled and we are responsible for the patient if they are performing an activity in a way that is not going to strengthen them like we want or is gong to injure them if they continue practicing the way they are doing. I wanted to put a couple things that I thought were beneficial to me. One is my journal from what happened each week. the other is my presentation that we had to give an inservice on. Mine was on a systematic review, which is great, but man was it difficult. I had to really work on breaking down a great deal of information. It was very beneficial to me. It was on how hip strengthening can assist in improving pain and function in someone with patellofemoral pain more than just knee strengthening. Interesting enough, the very last patient I say at the end of my six weeks was a girl with problems with PFP. She saw a physician who told her to work on strengthening her quads only. It was interesting that different fields of medicine are so behind on ways that patients can progress in their function by doing more research.
hip_and_knee_strengthening_for_pfp.pdf | |
File Size: | 1235 kb |
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pta_2700_journal.docx | |
File Size: | 20 kb |
File Type: | docx |