when do you feel less confident as an ATS? Compare that to when you feel the most confident.Sometimes I feel less confident evaluation of an athlete that is screaming in pain. This makes me less comfortable because I do not want to further injure the athlete, and sometimes I'm not sure how far to push them during certain parts of an evaluation. For example I'm not sure how far to push someone to try and move when they have an injury that they are afraid to move.
I am most confident while doing relaxed evaluations in the clinic. I feel as if these evaluations go much smoother, and I have an easier time determining what to do next and determining a diagnosis. Describe a treatment/therapeutic intervention you performed on or designed for a patient.
Why did you select that and what was your intended outcome? How did you assess its effectiveness? How will that experience influence your future clinical decision making A treatment that I have completed recently was a edema massage on an athletes hyperextended elbow. I was able to evaluate the athlete and rule out any fractures or ligamentous tears. I could not find anything that led me to believe there was something seriously wrong with the elbow. His mechanism was hyperextension and I learned from my preceptor that the athlete had a history of pretty extensive inflammation and swelling with fairly minor injuries. From this I decided that he could benefit from an edema massage to reduce some of the swelling, and afterward compression and elevation in order to keep it out. After the massage it was fairly easy to see that the swelling had reduced in the athletes elbow so I feel that the treatment was very effective in doing what I set out to do. It also reduced his pain level since some of the pressure was alleviated. In the future I will remember this method to get rid of unwanted swelling, and hopefully it will work as good as it did in this circumstance. I completed 7 attempts and 2 masteries this week. Reflect on your progress on one of your personal clinical goals.
Part 2: How are you progressing with your clinical packet? are you meeting your goals for that as well? One of my clinical goals was to develop my on field evaluation skills by doing more on field evaluations as well as sideline evaluations and asking questions about the evaluations I will get to do. I feel like this goal is coming along well. I have had numerous on field and sideline evaluations this year, some of them with help from Bre, and some of them on my own. The more I do these the more comfortable I get with them. I feel like I could do a great on field evaluation for a player and then follow it up with a good sideline evaluation. Bre is letting me have a lot of sideline evaluations as well as a good bit of on field evaluations as long as they are not really serious injuries. Overall I am getting much better at these. I feel like I am progressing with my clinical packet a little slower than expected but I'm not too far behind where I would like to be. I have gotten a bunch of attempts, and we are sort of trying to see if I can get the masteries by actually doing real evaluations instead of a bunch of situations. Overall its going pretty well. this week I was able to get 13 attempts and 3 masteries. What has been your favorite part of your clinical experience so far? Why? What makes that special for you?
My favorite part of my clinical experience has definitely been covering Friday night football games. I like being at these games because I have seen a plethora of different injuries. Of course this is probably because this semester is the first time I have been on a football rotation but either way it is nice to get all this experience with a lot of different injuries. I also like that I am getting to do more on field evaluations. All of this is special to me because I am learning more and more about how to cover football events and about the various contact injuries that I may not experience in baseball for example. All of this experience I am getting will help me when I get out into the workforce and begin to cover events myself. I got 11 attempts this week, no masteries. Describe what inspired your Little Clinical Question. Why did you select those individuals to be a part of your investigation team?
What are you looking forward to as you embark on answering this question? The major thing that inspired my clinical question was my recent back injury. After my injury occured I began to realize how many baseball players actually do have back injuries and I wanted to investigate why. As of now If I'm correct there is 6 minor back injuries currently on the baseball team alone. Blog prompt for this week: Think back to your sophomore year...what advice have you shared with current sophomores based on your experiences? Why did you feel it was important to share that advice? How was your start of the program influenced by an upperclass student?
With the current sophomores the majority of the advice I have given them is pertaining to them succeeding on their practicals. All of them are just like I was, they want to memorize how to take a practical instead of doing a complete evaluation of an injury. For the most part what I have been telling them is basically learn to do a good evaluation of a specific joint, and do that on their practical. I felt that this was important because they were all stressing out about a practical for the foot and ankle. I remember feeling that way when I was in their place and it is a terrible feeling. I really just wanted them not to stress out over a practical. For the most part I didn't really know all of the upperclassmen until the end of my first semester because I applied to the program late and had to play catch up. But they more or less did the same as I did for the few sophomores that needed some help. I think the biggest thing about the upperclassmen for me was that they could always find a way to make me laugh. That always made my day just a little better. I received 8 attempts this week and 3 masteries. My prompt for this weeks blog is "What is your most challenging class so far this semester? Why do you find it challenging? How are you coping?".
My most challenging class so far is probably Biology. It is so challenging because it goes into so much detail about the different topics that are covered in the course. Take photosynthesis for example, there are all these chemical things happening and I am definitely not very good at chemistry, so instead of actually understanding what is happening in these complex reactions I just have to memorize what is going on. I am coping with this by studying pretty dang hard. I am using all of the study guides that are given to us extensively. It also helps that I have a friend in that class that I can study with. That is probably the biggest help because if I can't understand something maybe he will. It has helped tremendously for our recent test. This week I received 3 attempts and wrote up 3 more. I also received signatures for 3 masteries. This weeks blog prompt is to describe an evaluation opportunity that I have had over this semester and tell how it will influence future clinical decisions.
My first day off site this semester, I was able to complete a knee evaluation on a football player from John Battle high school. I completed a history and found that the athlete had had a similar injury to the opposite knee, an MCL sprain. After completing various tests to rule out other more serious conditions, I gave the athlete a diagnoses of a grade 1 MCL sprain. During this evaluation I felt as if i had completed a pretty solid evaluation without leaving anything out. Bre confirmed this by telling me I had done a pretty good evaluation. The only drawback with my evaluation is that I did not show enough confidence. That was the only critique that Bre had of my evaluation. So my major takeaway from this evaluation is that I need to be more confident when doing evaluations. In the future this will help me be more decisive. I will keep this in the back of my mind by telling myself that I can complete a good evaluation by myself, and if I am wrong, I will learn from it. I was able to complete 14 attempts this week towards my clinical packet. Think about the preceptors you have had, what characteristics did they exhibit that you have adopted or hope to utilize in your career. Explain why.
Melissa Davis- Melissa is probably the smartest preceptor that I have had during my clinical rotations. Since I have been with her she has not been wrong on a diagnosis. She is also very efficient with rehab. Melissa is very strong in the clinic and she is also willing to help the students in the AT program whenever they need help. I like that when there is an evaluation to do she usually just lets the students go, and then makes pointers after the student is done with the evaluation. Melissa is also the fastest person I've ever seen tape. Kris Johnston- Kris is also really smart in the clinic. His best characteristic is that he truly cares about every sport and every athlete. He is always sensitive to the patients and tries to work around their schedule. Kris does a great job with evaluations as well as rehabs also. I think he benefits from caring about each of the athletes, and this helps him be great at his job. Bre Davenport- Bre is great with on field evaluations. She is very fast and knowledgable when it comes to evaluating someone quickly and effectively. I think Bre's greatest quality is the ability to juggle so many athletes at once. She has to be able to do this to keep up with all 4 high schools that she covers. Bre also excels at communicating with younger athletes in a way that they can understand and is great at communicating with coaches. Overall I have tried to adopt all of these characteristics that I have been shown by my preceptors. I feel like I am pretty good at communicating with athletes. I have learned that caring for the athletes is a great quality to have because it forms a good relationship between the Athletic Trainer and the athlete. This relationship shows the athlete that they can trust the AT when they get injured. I will always be trying to be as good as Melissa in the clinic but I'm not too sure if that will ever happen. I haven't met anyone with that much knowledge in the Athletic Training world. One of my clinical goals this semester was to become better and more comfortable at completing on field evaluations. During my offsite experience I have been able to begin to achieve this goal. I have had multiple opportunities to go on the field and complete evaluations. I have not had any major injuries though. Normally they have been either cramps or someone getting the wind knocked out of them. I believe I will be much more comfortable when the time comes to go on the field for a more serious injury.
During this semester I am really just trying to fill out the pages in my clinical packet whenever i do an evaluation. I haven't been able to do very many since preseason because a lot of the injuries have been the same. I am under the goal I set for myself. I believe this is mostly because most all of the offsite experience I have had lately has been football games and there isn't really a good time for me to have my packet signed. This week I wasn't able to get any masteries. |
AuthorCarson Bryant Archives
April 2018
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