PT Clinic Reflection Journal

2/26/07

TodayI worked with the same patient as last week. Today the patient was the most relaxed I have ever seen her, but showed discomfort with the treatment. I tried to back off with the treatment and did just five reps of PROM when I normally do about ten. I feel very comfortable working with this patient. I think I am too in my comfort zone with this patient because I don’t really have to plan with her because it is basically the same treatment each time and I can write most of the note before the pateint come in. But we are suppose to be switching patients after break next week. This is good because while I like working with this patient I need to work others.

After my patient, I worked with another student treating a patient. That went fine until we had a fire drill towards the end of the treatment and had to go freeze outside!! : (  I need to work on improvizing more during a treatment when something doesn’t go as planned. I liked working with another student today for awhile because I got to see how she does things. Over all it was a good day.

2/12/07 

Today, I worked with the same patient as last week. The treatment was basically the same except I did goni measurements also. The goni measurement were hard to get because the I could not easily position the patient for measuring. I was also concerned because I did not get as high of ROM as the other PTA working with this patient, but after talking to another student I found out it is because I didn’t use heat. The patient was harder to treat today because she seemed resistant to the treatment.I felt good about the treatment today. I have treated this patient a lot, so I am comfortable treating her. I felt I did good about the ROM, but I feel I need to work on doing goni measurements on this particular patient. I plan to improve my practicing.

I did not have a second patient, so I watched other students do their treatments. I helped another student gait train one patient. That was interesting because I have not done a lot with gait training this semester. Then when we got back we had issues with the power wheel chair and we ran the patient over. : ( Thankfully no one was hurt. : )  I need to work more with wheel chairs, so I can maintain the safety of the patients. That’s all I have to say about that!

2/5/07

Today was the first day that I saw two patients by myself. The first patient I saw was one I worked with last semester. I felt I improved considerably with working on this patient than last semester. I was able to get through all the ROM exercises and transfers within the hour where before it longer when working with a classmate. I also felt like I was comfortable with knowing how far to push the patient even though she can’t speak and tell me.

The second patient did not go so well. I felt unprepared. I went over HEP and correct posture, things I am sure the SPT went over last time with the patient. I felt like I didn’t give her a very good treatment. I didn’t have enough material  to cover the whole hour.  I felt kind of clueless on what I should do in the treatment.

I am happy that I am improving my communications with the SPTs. I went right away to the SPT with my second patient when I wasn’t sure what exactly she wanted me to do with the patient. I was also able to write both my notes in the hour time. I think this is a good accomplishment since it use to take longer with writing just one note. It was a busy day for me since it was my first time doing two patients on my own, but overall it was good.