Bright New Faces and Familiar Faces

Hi there, everyone! I hope you guys all missed me because I sure missed you. For some reason, it feels like forever since I’ve made one of these posts. Maybe it was the fact that this week was mostly much of the same ol’ process, but every week is progress and I’m still very excited to share it with you all :-).

So here’s the thing. Just when I thought we finally reached consistency within our clinical team, I see two new bright faces walk through the doors. I think it’s safe to say now that there’s always going to be students coming and going for their respective clinical rotations, and there really is no predictability as to how long a certain staff group may stay intact. Nonetheless, I still would like to introduce you guys to Chandra and Marissa. Both of these women are extremely driven and dedicated to their craft as they strive to work their way up in the PT realm. Each were able to connect and work with patients in their own unique way as I was there in the background steadily taking notes :-P. I think it’s safe to say that after my stay here I will have met so many new people, all with diverse traits and methods, yet all equally important to me and my growth as a person :-).

Also, I don’t know if you guys still remember Joe from the first few weeks of my internship (the guy with the amazing beard), but he came back to visit us all on Wednesday. I really got a chance to catch up with him and was able to get advice for college and other aspects of my not-too-distant future. But in case you guys wanted an update on him, he’s currently preparing for a presentation that he has to give in May (just like me!) and entering that final stretch of PT school, eventually making him a free bird :-). He mentioned he’ll also be coming back to visit next Wednesday so I’ll definitely be looking forward to that. But in all, good luck to you, Joe as you begin the end of PT school! :-)

SURVEY UPDATE: So the surveys have been coming along pretty smoothly. I talked to my faculty adviser, Ms. Kaur, and she told me not to worry about the sample size having decreased a bit (phew!). Essentially, since the data of the sample of patients I did manage to survey all seem to prove my hypothesis, there’s really no concern :-). But this week, I managed to compile all my data into a spreadsheet and over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be creating graphs and tables from that data and work to display a correlation between patient compliance and improvement.

Alrighty, that should just about do it for this post. I know this was a kind of shorter than usual, but this week was mostly the same routine as we continue to inch closer to the end. I can’t believe it’s almost here and I’ll definitely miss the family I have at Synergy. But for the next two weeks, I’ll make the most of my time with them and hopefully bring you guys some more exciting and lively experiences :-). As always, thank you all for taking time time out of your day to read my post and I’ll see you guys next week!!

Getting More Hand-sy...

Salutations viewers and welcome to yet another blog post! So, this week actually went by kind of fast; it was mostly the same old good stuff: surveys, stretches, exercises, etc. However, I did manage to take a leap in terms of getting my hands on patients…

This week, Vincent handed me the reigns of performing some palpation on various patients. What is palpation, you may ask? Palpation is a method of examining the body using one’s fingers and hands, usually to perceive or diagnose a particular illness. This is sort of a leg up from the stretches/exercises I performed on/with patients as I now begin to assume a more therapeutic role. Often time’s, palpation is best executed by applying lotion or cocoa butter to the skin (which I did this week :-)). Essentially, this allows for smoother “hand-work” on the body, further facilitating the diffusion of tension out from the afflicted region. 

Vincent also allowed me to prescribe some of my own exercises to several patients during their clinical sessions :-). Basically, he would have me call patients back from the waiting room, seat them on a table, and take down their subjective (just a fancy word for an evaluation form – how the patient’s feeling, any pain that’s concerning them, etc.). From there, it’d be up to me to either assign them to some stretching or have them perform certain exercises. For example, a patient came in yesterday having problems with her posture. She was somewhat of an elderly woman and of course with years of sitting and standing with improper posture, her shoulders began to shrug and her back began to hunch at an extreme degree. As a result, this accumulates slight back pain and a decreased height. See, the body will always want to take the path of least resistance, causing many people to shrug their shoulders and hunch their back because it’s easier than constantly standing up straight, keeping your chest out, and all the other mechanics for proper body posture. Therefore, it’s mandatory for you guys to fight gravity and make sure you’re always walking and sitting with a tall posture so that you won’t be regretting it later on in life. And remember, it may feel awkward at first, but gradually your body will become comfortable with it as it develops into muscle memory :-). 

Annnyyyywaaayyssss, sorry about that tangent, but let me get back to my example. So for this particular patient, I had her do scapular retractions with a band. Basically, she would be tasked with holding out the band in each hand with both her arms straight out in front of her. Thereafter, she would bring her shoulder blades back and pop her chest out without bending her arms at all, keeping her glutes tight, abs in, back straight, and chin up. I know, I know, there are so many little nuances to what appears to be a very simple, straightforward exercise. However, each intricacy is necessary in terms of actually making the exercise effective. Now, why did I choose scapular retractions? Well, for a good posture, the back should be straight and the chest should be prominent outwards. In this case, these retractions eliminate any shoulder shrugs as the shoulder blades are progressively being pushed back (this all while the patient is keeping his/her back as straight and his/her chest as prominent as possible). And finally at the end of the session, I asked her to practice this same scapular retraction motion at home, and hopefully she’s compliant and can achieve a nice straight posture in no time :-). 

Also since we’re on topic, the compliance surveys have been going pretty well. The game plan is to accumulate all the data and compile it into graphs and tables. And from there, I’ll analyze the information and hope to establish a correlation between improvement/muscle functionality with compliance. Hopefully *fingers crossed*, I’ll be able to statistically prove that patients whom are more compliant tend to experience greater improvement and muscle functionality than those whom are not. 

And yeah, that should just about do it for this week’s post. If you have any questions, please comment down below, I’d be happy to answer them and clear up any possible ambiguities. Thank you all for making it this far and have a wonderful weekend!!!

The Luck of the Irish

Hey there, everyone and happy St. Patrick’s Day! I can’t believe Spring break is actually over now :-(; I was just starting to get used to staying up watching the Office all night. But that’s okay because I’m ready to get back to business and man, do I have some interesting stuff to share with you all today. So, as usual, go ahead and grab a snack and buckle up this week six blog post; I hope you enjoy!

Where to begin… ah, where to begin? Well for starters, we added yet ANOTHER member to our team, Danny. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Why is it that every week there’s always someone new or someone leaving (or in some cases, both)? To be honest guys, I’m not exactly sure, but I’m hoping we can at last have some sort consistency as we creep closer and closer towards the end of my project. So again, I’m really sorry for any confusion and thanks for bearing with me thus far :-). But without further ado, let me talk a little bit about our new addition. Danny is on one of his clinical rotations, hailing from the same PT school as Vincent actually (convenient, right?). In just his short time here, he’s already been able to make an impact within the clinic through his simple jokes and reassuring smiles. In all, welcome aboard Danny! I’m really excited to learn even more about the depths physical therapy through a different lens.

 
Now moving on, does everyone remember EJ Gaines from last week’s post? If you need a refresher, he’s an NFL cornerback for the LA Rams coming in for offseason training and therapy. He came in Wednesday and not to brag or anything, buuuttttt… I wrestled him. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but hear me out on this. It was essentially a balancing exercise where EJ would have each of feet on a bosu. From there, I would use my hands to try and shove him off the bosus while he would aim to deflect my arms away and maintain his balance. I’ll admit I approached this drill with slight trepidation that I might get snapped in half by a guy who gets paid to tackle people. However, I managed to escape the drill alive, only bearing a couple scars on my arm; nothing too serious really. I even managed to gain some respect from EJ as we would fist-bump after every set. After that happened, I told myself I would never wash my hands again, but of course with the stomach flu and nasty bacteria spreading about, I had to :-(. I also actually felt a little treacherous towards the Arizona Cardinals in training with an LA Rams player; I just hope EJ doesn’t go berserk and get like 20 interceptions against us next year. Regardless, I still feel the Cardinals can manage to pull together a win :-).

   

And finally, let me give you an update on the surveys. I originally planned for a sample size of 20 patients to survey week in and week out to analyze their progress and compliance. However, I noticed that some of the patients don’t return every week because they may be sick or on vacation, etc. As a result, I’ll just have to make do with the sample I already have and possibly incorporate a more detailed analysis of the patients I do have weekly in order to compensate for the decreased sample size. So far, I’ve managed to jot down a set of notes for each patient which basically reflect how they’re functioning in the office and if any progress has been made since prior sessions. Hopefully, as the weeks go by, I’ll be able to establish a clear correlation between compliance and improvement.

Aaaand that should just about do it for this week’s post. Thank you to all who were able to read this far and I can’t wait to post again next week. Have a great weekend and make sure you’re wearing green today so you don’t get pinched!

Spring Break!!!

Hi all! As I mentioned earlier, this is my Spring break so unfortunately there won’t be a post about my research this week. Even though I technically didn’t have to go into work this week, I still visited a couple days for about an hour each to work on the surveys a bit. And GUESS WHAT?! I got to meet an NFL football player for the Los Angeles Rams. His name is E.J. Gaines. Guys, believe me I was trying so hard to keep my jaw from dropping during his PT session. I also felt like if I told him I was a Cardinals fan he wouldn't talk to me so I kept that to myself (for those who don't know, the Rams and Cardinals are HUGE rivals). But now that we're cool, maybe I'll tell him if I see him again and I'll let you guys know what he says :-). Also I’m going to try to get him in my survey sample so I can have an excuse to talk to him each week, but wish me luck guys!

Here's just some proof that I'm not lying :-)

(He's the one who makes the tackle)

Anyways, I hope everyone is having a relaxing spring break and we’ll be back on track next week!

Survey Tiiiiime

Hey guys! As promised, I have more pictures of your favorite dog, Bruin :-). I know you guys have been waiting for these all week so hopefully they can add that spark to what I hope is an already great day ('cause it always works for me, just saying). So without further ado, here you go…… CAUTION: THE FOLLOWING PICTURES DISPLAY EXCEEDING LEVELS OF CUTENESS

Now that that’s out of our system, let’s get down to the juicy stuff: what exactly happened this week. Well, for starters, we got ANOTHER new student that’ll be working with us. And as you can probably predict with this information, we had ANOTHER student leave us as well. It’s kinda been the trend for the past couple weeks. I’m sorry if there’s any confusion about this; I promise there will be more consistency as we delve deeper into the project. But anyways, the new student who’ll be joining us is….. *drum roll*…. Wendy! No, not the Wendy from the iconic fast food chain. Instead, this Wendy is on her final clinical rotation and will be with us at Synergy for the next 11 weeks. But wait, Ameya… what exactly IS a clinical rotation? Well, now that you ask, a clinical rotation is an opportunity for students to apply their knowledge from the classroom to real life medical situations while also helping them gauge what residencies are right for them. Remember Joe, Lori, Jordan, and Nicole from prior weeks’ blog posts? Well, they were all on the tail end of their own clinical rotations. And now, we have someone else who is also on the tail end of hers. Even though I just introduced her to you guys last week, Kirsten’s clinical rotation is actually only two weeks as she now heads back home to continue PT school. It was really nice working with her and understanding yet another perspective on how therapists approach and carry out their work. But, as I mentioned earlier, we also have a new shipmate on board in Wendy. And the thing about Wendy is that she always seems to prioritize the patients and their needs, allowing them to feel the utmost comfort in what is already a very welcoming atmosphere. In all, good luck to Kirsten and welcome aboard Wendy!

I also need to tell you guys about a very interesting hand exercise Vincent had me try out this week. It’s called the “rice bucket exercise.” I know that may not be very self-explanatory, but let me explain. In this exercise, patients are seated in a chair and before them is a giant bucket filled all the way to the top with dry grains of rice. The objective of the patients is to perform a series of wrist maneuvers in order to stimulate the wrist and forearm muscles while they dig as far as they possibly can into the rice bucket. The maneuvers include wrist abduction, adduction, and rotation (both clockwise and counterclockwise). The legend has it that out of everyone who has performed this exercise, only three have made it to the bottom of the bucket. Now, when I tried it, I thought I touched something that felt like the bottom, but I could just be tooting my own horn. Let's just say I made it for good measure ;-). Anyways, below is the setup for the rice bucket exercise. Trust me, it’s way harder than it looks!

And finally, last week I mentioned I would talk with Vincent about expanding my research and actually implementing it within the clinic. From there, I decided to include some surveys which would analyze patient compliance and connect it with any improvement (recovery-wise). The ultimate goal is to establish some sort of correlation between compliance and improvement. Now, I have to say, it was a really interesting experience as it allowed me to get even closer with some of the patients as I appreciated some of their honesty. One patient even jokingly said to me, “I have to tell you something that may skew your data… I’m not a very compliant patient.” And after that, we just laughed it off and I proceeded with the next questions. For some of the patients who displayed non-compliance, I found it interesting that when asked how important they felt the recommended treatment regimens they are given to exercise at home are (in terms of affecting their recovery, of course), they would often respond with an answer of “10” (on a 0-10 scale where 0 refers to complete insignificance and 10 refers to absolute significance). However, when later asked if they could honestly grade their compliance, they would sometimes respond with a “5” or a “6” (also on a 0-10 scale where 0 means they don’t do them at all and 10 means they do them no matter what). Therefore, this shows how despite the fact that many patients may value the treatment exercises they are asked to perform at home, there are still some who don’t exactly illustrate the same passion when it comes to actually doing them. And this can be said for a variety of reasons such as, the degree of difficulty of the exercise or possibly some personal matters that may occupy their time rather than stretching or doing something else to stay compliant. If you want to check out the survey and basically what I asked each of the patients, please click here. There’ll be more information/analysis on the surveys as we dive a little deeper into the project, I just wanted to give you all a small taste of what’s to come (I know, I know it’s a lot of information, but please bear with me; it’ll become much more clear in the coming weeks).

And as always, thank you to all who have made it this far. I’m sorry for the rather long post this time; a lot of important things happened this week and I just wanted to keep you all in the loop :-). Also, next week will be my spring break so unfortunately there won’t be a blog post from me for that time :-(. I’ll definitely miss you guys and I hope this break can make you all hungry for my next post which will resume the week after. Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the break!