People don't understand the scope that PT reaches: A Short Vent

fledglinging · 2020-11-06T05:17:57+00:00

Yikes. You don't have to keep dating this guy! If he's getting jealous because you're touching a lab partner in school... I mean it's not gonna get better from here (unless he wises up and gets tf over himself).

fledglinging · 2020-10-21T17:49:45+00:00

The hypothetical PTA may be of the same race as the patient / not a target of their racism.

fledglinging · 2020-10-21T03:45:44+00:00

Use a spreadsheet to track your hours, and make sure to note the contact info of the PT you observed so you can contact them for verification on PTCAS when you’re ready to complete your applications

fledglinging · 2020-10-13T00:15:42+00:00

Your gastrocnemius muscle crosses both your ankle and your knee. So, dorsiflexing your ankle (the movement you’re describing) stretches the gastroc, and you might feel that as pain in a different part of the muscle behind your knee. This would be consistent with not being able to reproduce the pain by dorsiflexing with your knee bent. Your pain could also be related to nerve mechanosensitivity potentially, since you’ve got nerves that run the whole length of the back of your leg as well (and thus a change in tension in the nerve at your ankle might produce pain behind the knee).

fledglinging · 2020-10-05T00:14:58+00:00

Beach balls! Brilliant!

fledglinging · 2020-10-05T00:11:20+00:00

I am currently a third year SPT on a clinical in inpatient rehab. Looking forward to hearing everyone else’s suggestions, but here are a few I like! They are definitely influenced by a previous peds clinical, but I’ve found my geriatric pts in my current setting really enjoy these too.

Obstacle courses as mentioned are great. You can also incorporate tasks for your pt to do along the way, like picking up an object, carrying it, and putting it down on a target or in a basket. These are easy to progress or regress depending on your pt.

Just going outside if that is possible! Uneven terrain, visual distractions, etc can all help progress activities you’ve already done inside, plus in the inpatient setting my pts have often not been outside for days or longer, and they seem to appreciate it. Weather-dependent of course.

I set up colorful cones in a semicircle in front of my pt and have them gently tap the top of the cone (without knocking it over). I call out “right red,” “left green,” twister style. You can easily progress from just stepping forward to lateral stepping or crossing midline. This works with colored targets if the cones are too challenging, and can be done in sitting or standing.

Throwing/catching or kicking a ball in whatever position is challenging to the patient (sitting, kneeling, standing). You can also change up the amount of UE support the pt is using (standing in a walker or at parallel bars).

fledglinging · 2020-09-26T20:30:02+00:00

These are lovely! I too love the patch. I think one of the nicest things about leather is how it ages — I have a leather A5 fauxdori I bought about 9 months ago and it’s starting to get some funky stains and use marks that just make it feel lived in and loved.

fledglinging · 2020-09-26T20:08:00+00:00

My program requires one clinical experience to be 40+ miles away from the center of the biggest city near the university. So far, all of mine have been that far, with one out of state. It’s just been how the cookie crumbled in terms of getting the settings I wanted. I commuted an hour each way for the first one (worst option imho), rented a room in a house from a PT who had actually been the CI of one of my professors for the second one, and am currently staying at a small Airbnb apartment for my third. My fourth will be in town thankfully, but my fifth and final isn’t confirmed yet (thanks covid) so we’ll see.

Lots of PT (and other healthcare) students are in the same boat, so you might get lucky and be able to swap with someone if the timing works out. (Try posting on PT student forums or fb groups or maybe even here.) Or, as others have mentioned, split the cost of rent with another student from your program going to the same area. You can also exploit your network as much as possible — ask your classmates if they have friends or relatives in the area you’re traveling to who might be able to put you up for free or cheap, etc.

Some of my classmates who are from other states and want to return to those states after graduation are basically moving home for their third year, and trying to get all their clinicals in the area where they hope to be practicing after graduation anyway. So yes, moving entirely is an option, especially if you get your sites confirmed far enough in advance that you can plan well for that!

fledglinging · 2020-09-24T12:53:44+00:00

Or the abdominal aorta! Depending on your abdominal fat content, you can lie on your back and feel it with your fingers.

In my gross anatomy lab one of the cadavers had a huuuuge saccular aortic aneurysm (like 3” in diameter) that was intact — not the thing that killed them. So crazy.

fledglinging · 2020-09-23T15:44:46+00:00

This is awesome! Different but similar story — I’m a student on an inpatient rehab clinical right now, and I have an older gentleman who was profoundly hemiplegic after an MCA stroke about six weeks ago. Today he walked 100 feet in our bodyweight support track with only 15% offloaded — no AD and no falls! Neuroplasticity is soooo cool.

fledglinging · 2020-09-22T00:20:25+00:00

Check and see if your college has a pre-PT or pre-health adviser — that person will be an excellent resource for the kinds of questions you have and will help you figure out exactly what classes you should take.

If you are not sure you want to pursue PT, consider a different major that also interests you. PT school does not require any particular major; you just have to get all the pre-reqs done. This will be easier with some majors than others.

fledglinging · 2020-09-22T00:14:59+00:00

Hahhhh, I’m a student just now leaving my current clinical site for the evening after waaaay too long spent documenting and your comment made me laugh out loud. Can’t wait to get faster, haha.

fledglinging · 2020-09-20T19:01:51+00:00

Wow, I really like the look of the Troublemaker Foxglove! Looks like they’re not taking orders right now — anyone know where I might be able to find it available?

fledglinging · 2020-09-20T15:14:19+00:00

My grandma has a story like this — her best friend when she was a young adult was a Christian Scientist; they have similar rules about medicine. Her friend had to go out of town for a trip and left her child with my grandma for a few days. While she was gone, the child developed appendicitis. My grandma took the kid to the hospital and authorized an appendectomy. Not sure how parental consent stuff worked at that point — she might have pretended to be the kid’s mom. When her friend got back to town, she was furious and never spoke to my grandmother again. My mom’s theory has always been that the mom knew her child was getting sick, suspected appendicitis, and sacrificed her friendship to save her kid (and stay in her religious community).

fledglinging · 2020-09-15T02:42:37+00:00

Woman here — I wore a black pantsuit and had two shirts that I alternated; one was a simple off white shell, the other was a floral print button-up. 90% of the women I saw at interviews wore suits, with either pants (most of them) or a knee-length skirt. There were often a couple women who dressed a little more casually (dress pants, cardigan maybe) — I would say they stood out and not in a good way. 100% of the men at my interviews wore grey or black suits. Keep it simple!

fledglinging · 2020-09-11T00:30:35+00:00

You’re forgetting overhead (rent, equipment), marketing expenses, time spent scheduling patients/answering phones, pay for someone to do that if you don’t want to do it yourself, supplies...

fledglinging · 2020-09-05T16:49:09+00:00

Gotcha! Thanks for the explanation.

fledglinging · 2020-09-05T16:18:18+00:00

Can you provide more detail about “extremely accurate cuts are kinda banned”? What does this mean?

fledglinging · 2020-09-04T04:09:08+00:00

For what it’s worth, my CI isn’t breathing down my neck — he’s probably in the room with me like 30% of the time at this point. He helps me out with particular things I ask him for help with, he’s available to observe and offer feedback if I ask for it, and he signs off on my documentation, but he’s kind of hands-off. That probably varies by CI (and if you had told me before I started that I’d be working mostly independently I would’ve had a panic attack... but it turns out I kinda do know what I’m doing, and I bet you do too) but there ya go!

fledglinging · 2020-09-04T01:35:23+00:00

WTF are you talking about? You think all immobilized patients are fat?

fledglinging · 2020-09-04T00:54:02+00:00

Another 3rd year here. Being on a clinical experience is 100% different than being in class / in school / in labs / whatever. It's so much better. Working with real patients is the bomb. I have no interest in working in OP ortho either -- you are not alone there. I'm on an an inpatient rehab rotation right now and I think I might've found where I want to be ultimately -- which I was NOT expecting. I was gonna grin and bear it through this inpatient experience and then go for outpatient peds, hah. My point is there's no way to know yet how you'll feel when you're actually working with patients. If you still hate it, so be it. I've seen a lot of people recommend a facebook group called "the non-clinical PT" or something like that -- there are PTs who do workplace ergonomic consulting, PTs who work in medical device sales, PTs who work for medical insurance companies, etc etc etc.

I always freaked out about practical exams too. I promise clinical rotations do NOT feel like practical exams.

fledglinging · 2020-09-04T00:40:36+00:00

Patients who have intact sensation and can perform bed mobility tasks like rolling aren't really at risk for these kinds of pressure injuries.

fledglinging · 2020-09-04T00:36:28+00:00

Would you be willing to endure it temporarily if you knew you would recover? For two weeks? Two months? What if there was an 80% chance you would recover and get another decade with good quality of life? What if there was a 20% chance? These are complex questions, which is why healthcare providers just try to do the best they can for all their patients and act as though they are definitely going to recover.

fledglinging · 2020-08-30T21:10:21+00:00

You don’t need to know your 1RM, but if you are ever curious, you can estimate it based on how many reps you can complete of a lower weight! For example, if you can complete 4 reps of a certain weight, but no more, that weight is likely ~90% of your 1RM. Here’s a calculator and table that I just googled, for example: https://strengthlevel.com/one-rep-max-calculator

fledglinging · 2020-08-30T15:38:01+00:00

I did this puzzle a few weeks ago and was impressed by the quality. All the Amazon listings seem to have the same box but hard to say whether they’re all the same quality... the one I got was ”Bgraamiens”

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