Clinical Experiences!!!!
This section expresses some of my exciting moments as an athletic training student starting from my sophomore year at Emory & Henry College. Each semester, I have experienced different rotations and learned many skills from them. Below highlights these moments and allows you to understand what I experienced throughout these rotations.
Senior Year
AAU Wrestling Tournament: This semester for my clinical experience, I was able to attend an AAU wrestling tournament for a whole weekend (4/12/19-4/14/19 at Dobyns-Bennett High School) with my senior class. When I was first introduced to this project, I was a little nervous to leave the clinic in Emory and apply my skills for a sport we do not obtain. However, I was very excited for this opportunity to get a lot of bloody action. Although, this experience was not just attending a wrestling match, but as a class we were asked to make a risk management plan project for this event. When creating this risk management plan as a class, to me, I was in a little more over my head with this experience. I did not realize how much information and thought is put into a policy and procedure manual. Since we were creating this, we were able to come up with whatever we wanted to put into this P&P manual. As a class, we quickly realized this isn’t something that is split up between individuals to create. This was something that needed to be created together in order to be on the same page with everything. We did face some challenges when creating this document because there was a lot of information we left out. We did not cite properly when creating our draft and did not include detailed information throughout certain sections. For example, when we included prescribing medication, we did not justify which medications we were going to dispense. However, this was a great opportunity to learn from. I was able to understand how to create a P&P manual and what specific information should be included throughout it. I now feel more confident in creating my own policy and procedure manual if I needed to do. This was just the beginning of the great opportunity I experienced.
My experience at the wrestling tournament felt like a rollercoaster, and I am very grateful for this experience. I was very nervous on Friday once we first arrived. When we walked into the gym and saw 8 mats on the ground my stomach dropped. However, this was not because I was afraid to apply my skills, but nervous because there was so much going on. The population of the athletes were elementary kids ages 5-12, which is a lot different from the athletes I see daily. This was very different from spending a day in the clinic or clinically experiencing a game because there were 10 different matches going on at once. Not to mention these athletes were very flexible which was unique to their age group. I can remember multiple times where it would look like one of the wrestlers shoulders were out of place because of how far they were being stretched during a pin, but the athlete would quickly recover from the pin and fight back like nothing happened. This made me be on my toes the entire weekend because I did not to miss any injury that could happen considering they looked like they were bending multiple ways. We were all spread out along the mats to where we were watching at least 3 mats at a time. To me, I just needed my first injury to happen so I could get over the fear of walking out on the mat by myself. I believe my role as an athletic training student was to be a first responder to anything that happened. During this experience I had two very unique opportunities that happened to me, and I believe they helped me grow as an athletic training student. My first encounter included an unstoppable epistaxis. As soon as I saw there was a nose bleed, I ran straight to the athlete. I began quickly getting gauze out of my kit to wipe the nose off in order to see which side of the nostrils were bleeding. Once I found the source of the blood, I began trying to stop the bleed as soon as possible. However, he did not stop bleeding. The coaches were trying to help as they could, however, I felt very rushed during this experience because they wanted their athlete to get back out there and wrestle. Once I finally thought I had stopped the bleeding enough to plug the nose, I told them to stop the blood time and I inserted a nose plug into the athletes nose. Immediately, the nose plug was completely filled with blood and dripping out of the nose plug. We had to begin blood time again, and this is when the coaches began rushing me to get the blood to stop. However, I had no control over how much this athlete kept bleeding. Meg quickly came over to help me because they were beginning to yell to get the bleeding to stop. I plugged his nose for the second time and placed a piece of gauze around the nose and tape it around his head in order to help stop the bleeding to allow the athlete to continue the match. Not even 5 seconds later, the athlete had bleed through the gauze and power flex. We did everything we could in order to stop the bleeding in the two minutes, however, he did not stop bleeding in time and could not continue the match. Another experience I encounter was an athlete who was getting pinned and somehow his opponent “scorpioned” him. I had watched the whole thing happen, and as soon as the ref blew the whistle the athlete was laying prone and not moving. Immediately, I ran over to him and was very worried something on his spine was damaged because of the way his body got folded. I put my hand on his back and started asking him questions. He explained to me that his pain was along the spine. Once I realized that I wanted to make sure he could feel his legs and arms and move them. He was able to do both which was a very good sign. After talking with him for a little while, he was able to roll over and stand up. This was a very scary experience for me because there could have been potential of c-spinning him and I was the first one to him. In conclusion, I am so grateful for this experience and I feel like I gained a lot from it. In the future if I am ATing another wrestling match I now know that I will need a lot of glozes, gauze, and nose plugs. I will put nothing else into my kit. I also feel like I am more prepared for fast evaluations to assess if an athlete can continue playing. This has prepared me for the future because there was no holding back when I was there. Either you were ready or you weren’t, so I had no hesitation. This also helped proved to me that I can do this on my own and helped boost my confidence. Ortho-Clinic Experiences:
9/10/18: Six patients were seen by Dr. Hannula on Monday, September 10th. One patient was a follow up patient, and there were five new patients. Patient A came in to see if her stitches were ready to be removed. On August 30th, Patient A was in a training session and was performing box jumps. When the patient was jumping on the box, she missed the box and scraped her shin on the box. Patient A was taken to urgent care right after and received 4 stitches. Dr. Hannula expressed that Patient A’s leg looked really good and the stitches could come out. Dr. Hannula took the first stitch out, and then let the ATS take the rest out. Dr. Hannula then proceed to put two steri strips over the injury. Patient A was then released for activity without restrictions. Patient B was having pain in the fifth metatarsal. Patient B reported jumping on a vertimax and upon the landing she felt pain around her lateral malleolus. Patient B partipcated in pick up that evening and expressed excruciating pain when doing lateral movements, jumping, and skipping/bounding. Dr. Hannula scheduled an appointment for an x-ray for Wednesday the 13th. Dr. Hannula said patient B would need to wear a walking boot until the x-ray.
This was a very exciting experience for me. I learned how to take stitches out and put steri strips on. Lastly, I learned that a joes fracture is distal to the styloid process. Ortho Clinical Experience 3: 10/28/18 Three patients were seen by Dr. Hannula on Sunday the 28th. One patient was a follow up patient for an ACL injury. The patient had surgery 6 weeks ago and has been attending physical therapy since. Dr. Hannula checked ROM, and he expressed to the patient that he is on good track during his rehabilitation phases. The next patient that was seen by Dr. Hannula was a patient with a shoulder injury. During cheerleading, one of the cheerleaders fell during a stunt and the patient caught the cheerleader and the cheer landed landed on the patients shoulder. After evaluation, the patient has had previous shoulder injury, and Dr. Hannula expressed the patient might have fractured the clavicle. However, the patient would need to get an x-ray. Throughout this evaluation, Dr. Hannula conveyed that the clavicle is the last bone to have its growth plate close. This was very new to me and a very interesting new knowledge. The last patient that was seen by Dr. Hannula was a football player who recently dislocated the shoulder during the game. Dr. Hannula was present during this injury, so his evaluation consisted of seeing if the patient had any changes from the day before. In conclusion, he told the patient to take it day by day and if there is still tingling sensation that he would not be able to play in the game on Saturday. This was my last experience with Dr. Hannula, and I really enjoyed shadowing him. It was very interesting to watch him perform special tests, and talk to the athlete as if he had known them his whole life. |
Injury Referral Reflection:Initial Post Procedural Reflection: 4/15/19
When I first began this process, I knew how to fill out a claim form and how to enter the injury it into ATS. I also knew I was going to need to get the information from the patient about their daily schedule/school schedule to see their availability on when they would be able to attend an appointment. This case that I was able to present and be a part of was a very interesting injury. The athlete actually began the initially injury during his fall season. Melissa performed this evaluation and diagnosed this athlete with a potential MCL sprain of the right knee. After the athlete ended their fall season, their pain went away. Once they began playing in their spring season, the athlete started experiencing this pain again, however, the pain was only when the athlete twisted or performed a cut. The athlete was not positive for any special test, which is why this case was very interesting. When Dr. Hannula performed the evaluation he was unsure of what the injury could be because he could not reproduce the pain. Most of his pain was in the pes anserine area, but there was not special test that could replicate this pain. Dr. Hannula suggested to the athlete that addition testing would help identify if there was any potential damage to the meniscus. I was able to begin this process for the athlete. He was not sure if he wanted to get further medical imaging, and he wanted to talk with his parents before making this final decision. I was able to assist Melissa in this process by writing up the claim form, demographics, and filing this into ATS. I wrote a claim form for the athlete by getting his information from ATS. I then typed of all of his demographics for Melissa to have in case this athlete did want to get further testing completed. Looking back on this experience, I feel a lot more confident filing and completely a claim form and an typing a patients demographics up. I feel that this experience was a learning experience for me because I was able to learn how this process works. I feel more prepared for any future referrals that I would have to perform. Second Post Procedural Reflection: 4/15/19 For my second referral experience this athlete began his injury two years ago. The initial injury began when the athlete was in his 2017 fall season. He was forced into hyperextension when going up to block another player. However, the athlete was able to continue through his season before having any further treatment performed. After the season was completed, the athlete had an MRI which showed a small lesion on his labrum, this was not enough for the athlete to want to have surgery to fix due to wanting to play his senior year. However, after his senior season he wanted to have a reevaluation on the injury. This is what lead him to see Dr. Hannula on 4/15/19. Dr. Hannula proceed to say he wanted to have more imaging completed on his shoulder because he now believes there could be a potential hill sachs lesion. I was able to start this process by completely a claim form for the athlete. I received all the information from ATS. This process was a lot easier than the first time because I knew exactly where to look and where to fill this out for the athlete. Next, I typed up the demographics for the athlete and shared this with Cole. Then I talked with the athlete, and he expressed he wanted to go to another clinic where he had been before in the past. I also received the patients availability times and when he would prefer to have an appointment. I looked up the number for the clinic he wanted to attend. This was a different experience because I was calling an unfamiliar place to schedule an appointment. Once I called, I expressed to the secretary I was an athletic training student at Emory & Henry College and I would like to schedule an appointment for an athlete to see Dr. Horton. Since the athlete was already in the system in order to continue I needed to share the athletes date of birth and social security number. Next, I faxed over the athletes demographics to the receiving clinic. Then called the office back once I had finished faxing over the information and was able to schedule an appointment for the athlete. I had a little trouble at first being able to get all the information over to the clinic because they were not familiar with an athletic training student (or athletic trainers) calling and scheduling appointments. After I completed this process, I felt very eager to do another one. I feel really prepared to schedule appointments for athletes now. I believe some challenges I may face in my future setting regarding patient throughput would include calling places that wont let me complete this process because they are not sure what an athletic trainer is or if the patient has incorrectly entered their information on file. Dr. Handy Rotation
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