10/26/2018 0 Comments Reflective Journal #9As a senior athletic training student, it is getting easier for me to imagine what my “real life” job is going to look like when I graduate. It has also really helped me by going to any off-site clinical placement to understand what professionalism looks like in places other than the collegiate setting: the emergency room, the wound care center, the outpatient physical therapy clinic, and the family practice rotation. By modeling how other professionals act in their workplace and by implementing what I have learned about professionalism by experience and in class, I try to lead by example. However, I also make sure that I am able to maintain my personality and sense of humor while maintaining professionalism. I would never want to work in a place that requires me to lay down who I am as a person for my job - I want to pursue relationships with my patients, have comedic relief during treatments, and have an appropriately relaxed environment to help patients feel at ease when they are under my care.
Having said all of this, there are no students younger than me on my rotation at the moment, but I do have many freshmen approach me and ask for my advice concerning majors, career paths, experience and shadowing, patient care hours, etc. Because we are all pretty close, I try my best to show them what hard work, professionalism, and other good practices in the workforce look like. It is very important to me that I am punctual not only for my clinical experiences, but in all areas of my life if I can help it. Additionally, I never share patient information with anyone, including my best friends and younger “mentees”, and I make sure to share with them why I can’t do that. They respect that I take that part of my profession seriously. Lastly, I try to educate those younger than me on everything that I have learned and experienced throughout my time at Emory. I wish that I had had an older student that was pursuing the same career path that I wanted so that I could learn about prerequisites, patient care hours, application necessities and deadlines, the importance of class planning, and how helpful it is to have useful experience under your belt when thinking about future possibilities. It is one of my passions to invest into people younger than me, so I take a lot of pride in being as helpful as I possibly can to those who are walking where I once walked.
0 Comments
10/19/2018 0 Comments Reflective Journal #8This semester, my most challenging class is physiology with Dr. Fleet and abnormal psychology with Dr. Qualls. I feel like physiology is one of my most difficult classes because Dr. Fleet’s teaching style is very different from my learning style. She shows us a lot of diagrams, charts, and pictures, and writes the majority of our notes on the chalkboard during class. I have issues with retaining the information as she teaches off of the picture on the powerpoint presentation. Additionally, the way her notes are structured makes it difficult for me to remember and absorb while in class. I prefer lists and notes that are separated by subheadings depending on related topics. I realized that her teaching style was not working for me when I started reviewing for the first test because I had retained very little information from the class periods. This class is also difficult for me because of the relationship to chemistry. I find it hard to talk about ions, channels, gradients, etc. because it is hard for me to visualize them. I enjoy anatomy and my AT classes because I can physically see and touch what we are learning about; therefore, making it easier to make connections while I learn. I’ve always had a hard time learning about what I couldn’t see or visualize. Because of these obstacles, I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about how to improve my learning. I have found that when I relate what we are learning about in class to real life situations, such as diseases, injuries, and everyday life processes, I can understand the concepts much easier. Additionally, I plan on going through my notes and rewriting the information in class in ways that I can comprehend it better.
Abnormal psychology is hands-down my favorite class that I have taken so far, despite it being difficult. I retain the information well in class, and I haven’t been this excited about a class since I got to college. I stay engaged during class (and it’s an 8am class, so that’s big news), write detailed notes, participate when I can, and actually enjoy reading the textbook each week. The part of the class that makes it difficult is the amount of information that we are supposed to know. I feel almost behind in the class because the majority of the class has had multiple psychology classes, so their background of psychology is more extensive than mine, but that only pushes me to do better. For the next test, I plan on reviewing my notes much more frequently and rewriting information multiple times when I have trouble remembering it. I would also like to watch videos of mental illness interviews to practice diagnosing the patients. This class requires a lot of work, but I know it will be helpful to my future career. 10/14/2018 0 Comments Reflective Journal #7The little clinical question for this semester is: In endurance athletes, what is the most effective program to prevent medial tibial stress syndrome?
My partner, Laura, was the mastermind behind this question, and it originated from her past experiences with athletes that she has worked with. Even though she had the original idea for this question, it resonated with me in a different way. My roommate’s boyfriend had a chronic injury that put his future career at risk. He was training to be an officer in the Marines when he was in college, and thankfully is now continuing to pursue that career now after his graduation. He had quite a scare for his future while running cross country in college. He had experienced leg pain for quite a while, but did not think it was too much of an issue. Eventually he went to get the pain evaluated, and it turned out to be a stress fracture in his femur. This stress fracture lead to the finding of a tumor in his femur. Thankfully, the stress fracture healed and the tumor has not proven to cause many more issues since its original finding, and the doctors say at the moment that it does not need to be removed. Stress injuries hit a soft spot for me, partly because of watching my friend become so worried, regardless of how related the stress fracture and tumor. Additionally, at the beginning of football season, we tried to implement a program to help prevent ankle injuries. For most of the preseason, the athletes were showing up to participate in the prevention program and the numbers were high. Unfortunately as practices went on, fewer and fewer people would show up to complete the steps of the program. It was very difficult to create buy-in from the athletes. I believe it would be extremely helpful to look at a program and its effective, while also digging into how to create buy-in from the athletes, so they do not become weary and burn out from the program. Beth Funkhouser was selected as one of our committee ATCs, Joe Lynch was selected as an ATC, and Mike Caro, CSCS, was also selected. All the members of this committee are heavily involved with current literature, and I believe that they will have very insightful and up to date information to offer. I am excited to see what helpful information can be found and hopefully implemented to Emory’s athletic training setting. 10/6/2018 0 Comments Reflective Journal #6When thinking about what we have learned in textbooks, I try to remember that that condition is the perfect example of its kind. The history, mechanism of injury, observations, palpations, special tests, will all point directly toward that injury if it is a textbook injury. Typically in a textbook, the author will not mention other signs or symptoms the patient may have from other pathologies because we are being taught about just that injury. This is the reason we speak of “textbook answers” because the textbook presentation of an injury or condition is perfect, without any doubt. However, in reality those cases are few and far between. It reminds me that it is necessary to treat the individual, not the injury.
Through my experience in the program, I have learned that an injury will hardly ever look the same between two different patients. Each patient has different anatomy, different prior conditions, different skill and experience levels, and all of these factors can effect how the injury presents itself. I believe this concept is also hard with illnesses, not just injuries. Some individuals can present with only a few symptoms of an illness, while another patient will have all of the symptoms. Additionally, pain tolerance plays a role in reconciling textbook information with real life situations. For example, a football player this year experienced a grade 2 hamstring strain on the first day of practice will eccentrically contracting his hamstrings. That individual had never had an injury before, and his reaction to the injury was much more intense than other reactions to hamstring strains I have seen during my clinical experience. Overall, I think the most important thing I have learned from reading the textbook to personal experience is that we don’t treat injuries, as I mentioned early. The person is of utmost importance, not just treating a specific pathology like the textbook suggests. A patient consists of that injury, but also an emotional component, pain tolerance, past medical history, other pathologies, etc. My goal is to help the patient become better than he or she was before they walk into the clinic in whatever area I can help with, injury related and also not injury related. I believe making relationships with the athlete helps us understand that the person we are treating isn’t just a scenario from a textbook or from class, but they have become our friend (with professional implications, of course). |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2019
Categories |