Week 10 Open Post

I started thinking about sports physical therapy and athletic training. The two seemed to be really similar. Every experience that I've had or seen with an athletic trainer they've essentially done the same thing that a physical therapist has done. They try to prevent injuries, treat injuries, and try get an an athlete back to full health. I looked into some of the differences between the two and I learned that there physical therapy and athletic training are actually two very different things.

The first main difference between PT and AT is the education required. Athletic trainers don't have as much school or the same type of schooling as physical therapists. AT's have to get a bachelor's degree and pass a certification test and physical therapists have to get a bachelor's degree and then enter a physical therapy program.

The second difference that was talked about was the working environments. AT's work in sport settings like high schools, clinics, and most likely in an athletic training room. They are outside a lot of the time working directly with teams and individuals on a sports team. AT's also deal with the injury first, they tape, bandage, etc. PT's as I've discussed, work in more of a clinical setting that's more formal. They work with patients individually and work through different exercises to help the patient improve their full range of movement.

From this article, I learned that physical therapy and athletic training are the same in the sense that they work with injuries, but that's all about it.






CITATIONS

Hatcher, Tina. "Athletic Training vs. Physical Therapy." LIVESTRONG-Health. Demand Media, 10 Jan 2014. Web. 27 Mar 2014.

Week 10 Prompt Post: Remixing Knowledge

Trying to find a remix in the physical therapy field wasn't difficult at all. I figured the best way to see a remix about physical therapy was visually through a video and I was right. I found a video that I thought remixed information and skills of physical therapist perfectly.



This video was made by the American Physical Therapy Association and it shows all different types of physical therapists in several different settings and how they are all different but so similar at the same time.

RAIDS is a technique that can be used to review a piece of work. In my writing class, we apply RAIDS to a lot of different things that we do. We were asked to do to a RAIDS critique of the remix that we found for our field.



RAIDS critique of the remix video:

Revision=The video revises what physical therapy is today and how far it has advanced because of different technology and techniques that have become available to help patients throughout the rehab process.

Arrangement= The video puts into relationship the roles of a physical therapist and the roles of the patients that are receiving physical therapy. This video is showing how it takes an equal amount of work and will from both side to see improvement from the beginning when a patient first arrives to the time they leave their last session.

Invention= The video portrays the ideas that physical therapy can be for anyone. Anyone can be the people on the other side of the video. Anyone can make a difference in peoples lives, but they just have to want to do it and they have to be passionate about it.

Delivery=The material is delivered in the video format. The video is about 10 minutes long. It isn't terribly long and for someone interested in physical therapy it can keep your attention.

Style= The style isn't very formal. It's very visual and the vocab used by the physical therapists isn't too complex or specific to the field. It's general for anyone to understand what they're talking about. The video has backround music to make it more interesting than just watching people talk.


The audience of this video can be broken up into two different groups. The target audience was anyone that might be interested in physical therapy as an occupation someday. The general audience was anyone on YouTube. YouTube is the main source that people go to find videos and almost anything can be found so anyone that is just looking through YouTube could find this video.

The purpose of the remix was get information out there to people about what physical therapy is, what physical therapists do from day to day, and the different kinds of physical therapy available. The American Physical Therapy Association wanted to make people aware of the impact that physical therapists have on patients lives.

The rhetoric in the video was mostly persuasive and I think that it was succsessful. I know that I'm interested in physical therapy so I didn't need to be persuaded too much, but for people watching that video that maybe aren't necessarily interested in physical therapy it does a good job in showing the positive things about the physical therapy field and why anyone should/could be a physical therapist. Real people, real patients, and real problems are shown in the video so other people can relate to them or just relate in general.









CITATIONS



APTA. "Physical Therapist Careers Video from APTA." Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 12 Sep 2010. Web. 26 Mar 2014.

Week 9 Open Post

 

I'm revisiting my week 4 open post that was about different areas of specialization within physical therapy. Recently, I've been thinking about what area I would want to go into if I chose to specialize. When I first did the post and looked into the different areas I liked all of them. I find all of those areas interesting and I think I would be happy going into any of them. Then I started thinking about it more in terms of narrowing it down or trying to find one specific area that I REALLY find interesting. If there was one area that I would really like to specialize in I think it would have to be sports physical therapy.

 

As an athlete, I've been around so many injuries and I've known so many people to have injuries that have required physical therapy for practically my entire life. It's an area that I can relate to the most and it's an area that I'm passionate about. After deciding that if I were to specialize I would possibly want it to be in sports physical therapy, I looked a little bit more into what sports physical therapists deal with.

 

Main areas of sports physical therapy are:

Prevention

Evaluation

Treatment and Rehabilitation

Performance Enhancement

Education

Research

 

Sports PT's work with athletes to help prevent any injuries from happening. Especially if they are high level athletes, an injury would have a large affect on the players preformance and possibly the preformance of the team. In the case of an injury physical therapists come up with pre-participation screening, equipment recommendations, and cardiovascular fitness programs to help get the athlete back in the game faster and healthier.

 

A patient needs to be evaluated before they can return to the game after they've been injured. It's a physical therapists job to evaluate the athlete to make sure they are 100% to go back safely.

 

Treatment and rehab is the core of sports physical therapy. This is where physical therapists will work along side doctors to help athletes and come up with some kind of program that will best fit what they need in terms of being treated during their rehab stage.  

 

The basis of enhancing the preformance of an athlete is acutally evaluation. A physical therapist can determine an athletes strengths and weaknesses through different evaluations of body systems. After the evaluations, the physical therapist can get a feel for what the athlete needs to work on to improve and they make a fitness plan to target those areas.

 

Outside of different hands on things that a physical therapist does, they also focus on educating athletes and people involved with them about managing an injury and what they can do to prevent it. Physical therapists also teach other physical therapists that are in the sports field. As well as education, sports physical therapists research and find different ways to help athletes. It's a process of trying research and applying the research into real life to see if it works for the athlete.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CITATIONS

 

"What is Sports Physical Therapy?" About SPTS. Sports Physical Therapy Section, 2012. Web. 20 Mar 2014.

 

 

 

Week 9 Prompt Post: Recognizing Significance

We're supposed to find a news story that reports on the significance of our field and I found a news story article on how exercise and movement could potentially help those with the disease Alzheimer's avoid being put into a nursing home. The article was about a study that was done and it looked at three different groups. There was an in-home exercise group where physical therapists came in and helped patients, a group-exercise classes section where the patients would go see a physical therapist in a group setting, and then there was a usual-care group who received different tips and pointers on how they should be eating and exercising. The results showed that although all the groups physical condition declined, some declined more than others. The group that was in the best condition was the group that recieved in-home physical therapy and they were able to do more physically than both the other groups.

In this story,  new opportunites are being opened up for research between physical therapy and Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is becoming more prevalent in the older generation and there's now something that can't cure the disease but it can help treat it in the best way possible. The field of physical therapy plays an important role in this research and without it this new door wouldn't have been opened.

After reading the article, and learning about how physical therapists helped patients who have Alzheimer's and it ultimately gave them more time in their normal living environment because their physical condition was kept up to par and less accidents like falling were happening. In my opinion, this article stresses the importance of the physical therapy field. It's a great article because it shows how hope is given back to Alzheimer's patients. Physical therapists are helping these patients live their lives to the best that they can. Without the help of physical therapy these patients would have had a rapid decline in their health and physical condition.

Physical therapists had an impact on these patients and their families lives and that's really the most important thing about physical therapy. Physical therapy isn't just about helping a patient regain their mobility it's also about how the patients life can change for the better because of physical therapy.






CITATIONS

Goodman, Brenda. "Exercise May Help People With Alzheimer's Avoid Nursing Homes." Health. U.S. News & World Report, 15 Apr 2013. Web. 18 Mar 2013.

Week 8 Open Post

I came across something interesting this week for my free post. I found
an article that was written by Gabrielle Giffords called "The Lessons of Physical Therapy". Everyone knows the story of how she was shot in the head and was fighting for her life for a long time. Now she is dicussing how the lessons of physical therapy can be applied into different areas of her life that she once had.

She wrote an article about how her and her husband are trying to prevent gun violence and they've started and organization called Americans for Responsible Solutions. She talks about how the fight for trying to her project successful is difficult much like her physical therapy that she has been going through for the past three years.

The main point of the article wasn't even about physical therapy really, but what I found interesting was the connection that Gabrielle Giffords made. She connects two totally different worlds: medical and political. When you think about politics you don't think about physical therapy and vice versa. When you start thinking about it, the two are so similiar in the sense of how Giffords is tieing them together. They are both long, exhausting, difficult, some things will come easy, and other things will set you back to where you began.

From this article, I learned that when you take a step back and look at things in a larger perspective you can make connections between things that you didn't think you could and you can use these things to your advantage. Gabrielle Giffords used the lessons she learned in physical therapy and applied them to her work like in politics. This could be applicable to more than just politics and physical therapy and it's what makes good thinkers great thinkers. I think that it opens up ones mind and thought process to a whole different level and it gives that person the opportunity to think and do great things that they didn't think they could do before.

Gabrielle Giffords article is a great article and I would recommend for anyone to read it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/opinion/gabrielle-giffordss-call-for-persistence-on-gun-reform.html?action=click&module=Search&region=searchResults%230&version=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsitesearch%2F%23%2Fphysical%2Btherapy%2F&_r=0





CITATIONS

APP/Getty Images. "Former U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords has moved back to her native Arizona, where she was shot in January 2011." Photograph. Cable News Network, 13 Aug 2012. Web. 13 Mar 2014.

Giffords, Gabrielle. "The Lessons of Physical Therapy." The Opinion Pages. The New York Times Co., 7 Jan 2014. Web. 13 Mar 2014.

Week 8 Prompt Post: Practicing Knowledge

This week we were instructed to try something hands on within our field. It was perfect timing that this is the week that we had to do this post. In my foundations of Kinesiology class we have lab every week. This week we had the chance to learn about the uses of a goniometer and then we got to try it out in a group of people and see what it's used for in physical therapy.

A goniometer is used to determine what the range of flexibility is on a patient. It's kind of used as a tool to show how much the patient has progressed since the beginning of physical therapy. The actual goniometer looks similiar to a protractor that you use in math and it's also measured in the same units. The goniometer measurs angles in degrees to determine the range of motion. Gradual improvement in the range of motion and flexibilty is a good sign and shows that the patient is takint steps in the right direction.

In my class we learned about the different areas of a body that you can use a goniometer and where it's used in physical therapy. You can use it on the knee, foot, shoulder, etc. When it's used right you can get a fairly accurate reading of the degree of motion.

At first, I had trouble using the goniometer because I didn't know how to place or which way to move it to get the correct reading. I didn't know where exactly to place the middle of it so I was gettting some readings that were off. After a while I finally was starting to get the hang of it though. I really liked being able to do something hands on with phyiscal therapy because it was so different than just researching online and reading books about it. This part of the research project gave me the opportunity to physically do something directly related to physical therapy. It's so much different for me because at first I had no idea what I was doing with that thing and I started to second guess myself thinking things like I can't even use this tool, how am I supposed to be a physical therapist. But like everything, things take time and practice makes perfect I guess. It was nice to be able to see first hand something that I might be doing in my future and it after I finally figured out how to use the gonimeter it started to feel a little more natural for me.





CITATIONS

"Baseline Plastic 360º ISOM Goniometer 12"." Photograph. 3B Scientific, 2014. Web. 12 Mar 2014.