This semester had many ups and downs throughout. The good thing about this semester is that I am done with the biology components of the major. I let myself get to worried about those classes that I pushed away the rest of my classes. I got satisfied with doing the bare minimum which showed in my final grades in class. I know what I need to do in order to fix my motivation to be successful in each of my classes from now on. I felt with my schedule this year that I couldn’t be successful at all. I kinda gave up during the middle of the semester to be honest. Going from class all day straight to AT until 8 or 10 at night just drained the life out of me. When I would get back I wouldn’t want anything to do with homework because I just wanted to go to bed instead. I now see that I have to take advantage of the time off from AT hours and class to get my work done. If I just do the little things I know that I will be more successful than I ever have been. On the bright side, with everything that I was going through I still managed to be successful. In the clinic, Melissa said I was a rock star and that really means a lot to me. Majority of my motivation comes from how well I do in the clinic. I enjoy the clinical experience more than anything I do in school. I feel the clinic is where I evaluate myself the most. I know that this time next year I will have a job (hopefully as an AT), so I treat the clinic as if I am an employee and not a student. There are obviously differences between the two, but to me it is a way to see what exactly I am going to do later. I know my strengths and weaknesses now better than ever and plan on working on them. As a student, I am going to take class the same way as I do with clinical experience. I have sacrificed a lot of things to better myself so there is no excuses anymore for my mistakes. Learning from these and actually trying to better myself will be the most challenging part for the next semester.
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At the beginning of each semester, we are required to set goals for ourselves to better our AT skills or knowledge. The goals I set for myself were set up for me to improve my evaluation skills in general illnesses, areas of the body that I didn’t feel comfortable with, and my knowledge of testing muscle strength and function. During the men’s soccer season, I saw many hip problems (an area that I wanted to improve on) ranging from chronic to acute. Most acute injuries were just strains that happened in practice or during a game. During the evals I tried to distinguish which muscle was exactly injured by manual muscle testing. I would ask Melissa if I was not confident by explaining how I would test the muscle. She corrected me several times in the position I would have the athlete in. I never really thought of how important the position of the athlete is when testing strength. As the semester went on, I refined the techniques Melissa taught me by performing them during evals and on myself. I would put myself in the positions that I would ask the athletes to in order to get a feel of what it is like. The only goal I feel like I didn’t improve on is general illness evaluation. The only real illnesses that I got to see were with Dr Handy. Being on his rotation was awesome because I saw illnesses and conditions I learned about in class. Although this rotation wasn’t as hands on, I still learned a lot during my time there. Dr Handy explained everything very thorough and what I should look for as an AT and how to treat these illnesses. Of course for most part I would just refer because the treatments are out of my scope, but it was still very interesting to learn. I think being with Melissa and Dr Handy elevated my knowledge of evaluation very much. I know how to differentiate illnesses, conditions, and injuries much better than I ever have. There is still much room for improvement and I am looking forward to it.
For the five domains in AT, I feel most confident in evaluation of injuries and emergency care. I feel like those have been drilled in my head over and over again. It also helps that the first two years in the program have been based around these two. I don’t know which I am more confident in as of right now because I haven’t really been studying them as much as I would like due to the two biology classes I am taking. They have really taken a lot of my time up this semester, but in the clinic whenever I am doing evals or any kind of emergency situation I never feel like I don’t know what to do. I think going over situations with Melissa have benefitted me very much. When an injury occurs, I think of how the athlete could have been injured worse and go through what action is needed to do. The worst domain for me is budget part mainly because we haven’t finished learning this part. I feel like I still am not where I need to be right now. I want to start reviewing this area. I believe if I go over the types budgets then I will be able to put everything together. I could do mini mock budget for a couple of items that I would need in a clinic with my preceptor or teacher. The feedback on my budget would benefit me in the long run. I also want to go over rehab/strengthening programs so I understand the phases of the rehab process. Transitioning to another phase is hardest part because there is no set time limit for each phase. I want to better understand when I can progress to the next phase because returning to participation is huge part this career. This will help me with studying for the final in clinical, the BOC, and if I will have to create a budget where I work at. My plan for studying is to look over all the previous material during break of what I am rusty on. Looking over my notes from my previous AT classes and comparing them to the book will allow me to look at details I missed before.
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April 2019
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