The journal for this week wants me to talk about how I have communicated with my patients and the care team for them. Whenever I am with a patient I try to be very uplifting and straight forward with them. I found it to be much easier to communicate if I am very clear and concise. My rehab patient and I have had great communication after he met me a couple times. At first he really didn’t want to talk that much, but after a couple of rehab sessions he was fine. I also found it easy if I came into the clinic to talk about his rehab plan with Hannah before I started planning his exercises out. I made sure that if there was anything I shouldn’t do or should do for every step of the way. I would ask him how he felt the exercises were and if there was anything he would like to do as well. I think having to do this rehab project for Clinical really helped me with my communication skills. For my first rehab I wanted to make sure I was up to par with what Hannah thought and my patient as well.
For attempts and masteries. I have a couple more attempts to get and I will have enough to finish my packet. I have fell behind on masteries, but I am confident that I will be able to knock out most of what I have in order to finish my packet. Chaypin and I have been on the packet everyday that I am scheduled. I know I will have my packet done by next week. My greatest weaknesses would have to be procrastination and time management. Last semester was one of my worst when it came to homework and studying. I got so focused on Chemistry that I would put all of my other classes to the side. It turned around to bite me but luckily I made it through. The time management part goes hand and hand with procrastination. I always did my chemistry at night, but during the day I would just go to class, football, and AT on the weekends. This semester I have done much better with both, but I still need to improve because I know I can. I got a planner and went through all of the syllabuses for due dates. I have seen the benefits of just adjusting my habits by a little and I am ready to do better.
My greatest strengths would have to be determination and confidence. When I first got in the program these would have been my weaknesses. I have forced myself to become a better student/friend/son because I want to be better. I was not confident at all last year or last semester. After staying here over the winter and going over my clinical packet with Melissa and Cole I finally realized that I did know more than I thought. Everyday we would go over that packet and I would get more and more confident. Melissa really helped me get over the fear I had of what if I don’t know it. After passing my exit, I had the greatest feeling and ever since then I have been trying to be better because I loved the feeling of being successful. For attempts and masteries, I have been meeting my goal. I am about 15 attempts away from reaching the required amount. I am a little behind on masteries though because I haven’t been trying for those as much recently, but I met my goal for the week. Chaypin is still really helpful and encouraging when it comes to the clinical packet. The National Athletic Training Association’s new slogan is “Compassionate Care for All”. I think the slogan really explains how we approach everyone as an AT. I have seen many people come and go through the clinic and they are always treated the same. My preceptors have really given me a good look at how to be more empathetic to people and actually care how their health is. That outlook has definitely rubbed off on me now. Every time someone walks into the clinic I always try to be as friendly as possible so that they don’t feel out of place. I have been around AT’s in high school that really were just going through the motions and some that really enjoyed it. I can tell you that it did make a huge difference on how I felt about AT’s. Now that I am in the clinic and treating people I know how much better it is to be around someone that cares whether you are actually getting better. Personally I enjoy watching people come back from an injury and able to play again. It is one of the most satisfying feelings I have ever had. When I graduate from here and actually having to care for my own athletes I am sure that feeling will be even better.
For attempts and masteries, I fell behind my goal again. I know I was going to try and get more this week because of the lack of hours I had last week, but I fell short. Chaypin and I have agreed to start hammering that packet out so that I don’t have to try and finish with a month left. I have enough attempts and masteries so far that it won’t be that hard to try and finish my packet with two months left in the semester. This semester Colin and I have decided to look at the NFL scheduling games. Every season there is a Sunday game and a Thursday game. We are going to see if the short recovery time actually increases the chance of injury. This was brought to me and Colin’s attention when we were watching a Thursday night game. Several players had made comments about how they didn’t like the playing on Thursdays because of an increased injury risk. We knew that was going to be our clinical question. We first asked DC what his thoughts were on the subject and he was really interested. He is going to be our content expert because he has been wondering the same thing as us. He is also very knowledgeable with football. We also picked up Chaypin for our AT advisor. I was talking about it with Chaypin one day while I was at tennis practice and she wanted to be apart of our question. She thought it was a good idea and that it would be fun to look at. I think our investigation committee is going to point us in the right direction and help us figure out how to gather our information. I am very excited to research this question because it will be fun.
For attempts and masteries I am still doing good. This week I did not meet my goal though. I wasn’t in the clinic as much as I usually have been because the tennis match this weekend was cancelled. I am going to try to get more attempts this week than normal so I can catch up for not getting enough this past week. Chaypin is still helping me out and keeping me on track. I usually need help in the clinic during the rehab with the athlete. I think the reason why is because I have never done something like this before. I have a lot of questions regarding how this is supposed to go. Sometimes I feel that I am not doing the right things for my workout plans I come up with. I’m not too sure what I should be doing with him sometimes. I know he just had surgery so I am nervous to do certain exercises. It is just really hard to judge what he can do. I just don’t want to hurt him doing something basically. Whenever I feel unsure or stuck I always ask Hannah. Of course I have to get the exercises approved by Hannah anyways, but she will help me with what to do. Chaypin also helps me a lot as well. She gives me good tips on different exercises that will help with my athlete and my knowledge. They are really encouraging and professional which guides me to do well. Whenever I feel frustrated or stuck they will explain to me how to deal with it. It is really nice to have people that enjoy to help me out. There was one time I had no idea what kind of exercises he do or if he could do anything at all and Hannah broke everything down for me so I could understand how the process should go. I have also asked Chaypin the same thing before and she broke it down for me as well.
For attempts and masteries I am still doing good. We have a competition each month and right now I am leading by quite a bit. Everytime I am in the clinic I am always trying to write anything I do down. Chaypin actually helps by letting me do everything for her that I can get attempts or masteries on. I haven’t started going over the diseases yet, but I am going to this week for sure. So far I can say that I am doing much better on this packet than I have before. To be holistic to a patient is to treat the whole patient and not just the injury/problem. In many cases the injury was caused by an impairment the athlete already had. So if you just treat the patient of the injury then you can’t really help the athlete fully. This job requires that we look at that aspect because we want to make sure the athlete will not have this injury again. Sometimes there is nothing that we could have done to prevent the injury from happening, but if we can then we should. The patients come to us wanting to better than before and not have the injury occur again. The athlete that I have for rehab needs to have proper mechanics to throw a baseball. Even if he is back to normal there is still a chance for that injury to happen if he has poor mechanics. I know that falls primarily on the coaches, but we still need to communicate this problem. Now I am not sure if the athlete had poor mechanics in High School and that's the reason, but it is something I am going to have to look for. I am doing the athlete a disservice if I let him go back to participation if I haven’t treated the actual problem.
For the clinical packet attempts and masteries I can say that it is going really good. My preceptor really helps me with reaching my goal for this semester. The first month has been kinda slow and I haven’t been able to reach it, but now that we gone over some illnesses in Gen Med I am starting to really get my attempts in. Anything I do in the clinic I always write down what I did in my book if I can get an attempt or mastery. This past week I met my goal and I hope it is a reoccurring thing as well. I haven’t had many evals during my clinical hours. The few evals have done though I can recall them all. The one that sticks out the most was while I was off site at VA High School. It was during the halftime of the football game, and my preceptor wanted me to eval a baseball player that came in to see him earlier. It was my first shoulder eval so I was a little nervous at the time. I went through my history as best as I could. I started palpating and realized I didn’t ask him if he had ever hurt this area before. Of course the athlete said yes and was just done with his rehab. After that it took me no time to figure out what was going on. I took a step back from this experience and really thought how the history really is the most important part of an eval. It's how I can narrow down what's going with just a couple questions. I obviously will ask more than a couple, but it just explains what I am saying. I know that I will not forget this experience and every eval I will think of this as a reminder until I don’t need it anymore. It is just crazy to see what I have been learning actually apply to what I am doing.
For the documentation of the my masteries and attempts for my clinical packet I am sad to say I am still not able to reach my 12 attempts per week yet.This past week I got 4 attempts in my clinical packet. So far I am around 4 or 5 a week with no mastery yet. I am ready however to obtain a couple of masteries now so that is exciting. Once Gen Med lab starts up I will be able to achieve my goal of 12 attempts and 6 masteries a week. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2019
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