Journals
These journals reflect my weekly experiences as an athletic training student. Each journal reflects either an actual patient contact experience, or something I am working on in my athletic training courses.
This year I picked my clinical question based on my something I can test for the next year. My little clinical question is “does tenotomy the biceps tendon with labrum repair make athletes with overhead activity more susceptible to biceps tendinopathy after returning to play.” I picked this question because my rehab patient for my clinical class had labrum surgery, and they cut the bicep tendon off. I was really interested when I first heard about this because I never knew this is one of the ways to repair the labrum. I honestly had no idea this is how some surgeons perform labrum surgery. After I had initially thought about it, I was curious if this affects the athlete after return to play. I was also wondering if the biceps tendon just creates a new attachment to the biceps. After reevaluating the process, I wanted to find out if this causes more issues for biceps tendinitis. However, for overhead athletes, would this be beneficial because it would not cause any biceps tendinitis because the biceps tendon has been cut off. So I begun my question to figure out if cutting the biceps tendon does create any biceps tendinopathy. I have started my research already and found that it is very common for overhead athletes to cut the biceps tendon to relieve pain (biceps tendinitis). A lot of baseball players have had this surgery before in order to reduce pain in the biceps. My investigation committee consists of my AT advisor Hannah, my faculty advisor Beth, and my clinical partner Katie Meade. I am in the process of finding a content expert. I have reached out to Dr. Hannula, but was later told that he does not check his email. I picked Hannah because she has two sports with overhead athletes (volleyball and baseball). I picked Beth because I can come talk to her anytime about my research. She also has read a lot of research, so its helpful to come and talk about things I have read compared to what she has read. Lastly, I picked Dr. Hannula because he is a surgeon, and can talk with him about what he prefers/what is best.
This week I was able to get a lot of attempts with Bre. I made a home rehab for an athlete at Patrick Henry. It was actually quite fun to make it for her, and she said she was really excited because she was wanting to get better. I believe I got 9 attempts this week.
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When I need help, I look to a lot of professors and preceptors. There are some staff members who have helped me throughout my 3 years at Emory. Depending on the situation is who I go to for help. If I need help with one of my athletic training classes, I usually go to Beth or Melissa. I started going to them my first semester of sophomore year because there were things I just couldn’t grasp. They were able to guide in the best direction of what resources I should go to, and how to understand what was going on with my learning process. Usually my problems were something really easy, but my brain just couldn’t grasp the information. So they would tell me “come on Sam, you know this! Stop making this more than it is” which would help me look back at it and understand what it was and why I was making it over complicated. I take things way too far. Which I guess could be good or bad. However, there are things that are very simple, and I just can’t comprehend. So those are the people I go to when I am struggling with my athletic training classes. When I am struggling with other classes like my chemistry class or stats, I would turn to Brianne. She would usually tell me that I might need to take a break from those classes and try to retake them next semester. However, this was more than enough for me to challenge her and allow me to do better in the class. Her support allows me to challenge myself. Whenever I hear “I cant do something” or “maybe take break from it,” it really fires me up to want to prove everyone wrong and show them I am ready and capable. Which ironically is really helpful for me to go to Brianne because hearing that allows me to do better in the class. Lastly, for the most stressful part of the semester (exit interviews), I turn to Chaypin. She helps me balance my stress, knowledge, and schoolwork. I try to begin my book early in the semester, however, I tend to forget small details about the subject. So she helps me to gather all my thoughts together and continues to ask me the same questions to make sure its locked in my brain. All these people are my support system in different ways. When I am struggling with something, I know exactly who to go to for help.
I was able to get 8 attempts this week and no masteries. However, I am getting masteries this week! An athletic trainer is with a certain sport throughout their whole entire season, and sometimes for multiple seasons. They watch the athletes every day at practice. They know more about the athlete than another health professional because of the amount of time spent watching their practices/games. The athletic trainer should know what is a good and bad day for each athlete. They should know their personality and exactly what is normal and abnormal for them. When a patient comes into the clinic about an underlying problem he or she is experiencing, there is usually more to their injury. The athletic trainer does not just focus on their injury, but also on the core reason that could be effecting the problem. Its important for the athletic trainer to be able to notice when something isn’t normal with an athlete. For example, if an athlete is experiencing an eating disorder and is complaining of being fatigue all the time, an athletic trainer would notice that the athlete’s physical appearance has completely changed. They would be able to help the patient not only fix the problem with being fatigue, but educate and help them fix their eating disorder. Its also important because the athlete has someone to come to with other emotional issues they may be experiencing. This gives the athlete someone to trust to come to in order to help them through an emotional problem. Another important reason the athletic trainer should treat the whole patient rather than focusing on the impairment because they can know when to either push the athlete throughout rehab or how serious an injury might be. When the athlete is going through rehab, the athletic trainer will know when they can push the athlete to do more, or when the athlete has done too much, or even had a bad day to not allow them to reach their full goal. An athletic trainer has a very important role to the athletes compared to other health professionals because they are able to help the athlete by fixing the whole patient rather than the injury. Due to being with the athletes constantly they have an advantage in knowing when something else is going on with the athlete other an injury. By the athletic trainer taking a holistic approach to their patient they can also help them with mental problems going on in their life too.
My role as an athletic training student during rehab has multiple effects to my patients. As an athletic training student my main goal for rehab is to help the athlete or athletes get back to performing sport specific activities. However, there is a lot more than performing exercises or regaining full range of motion throughout this process. Throughout rehab, there is usually a progressive protocol that is followed to help the athlete heal from an injury, but each patient is very different which means some patients may progress slower or faster than the protocol. One must take into account the athletes mental and physical capabilities when programing their rehab. Different patients can fly through strengthening and range of motion for their injury, while others struggle because they are too timid to perform certain actions because they are afraid or hurting themselves again. So each patient should be treated differently according to their attitudes and efforts. I progress with my patient on a day to day progress. By watching the patient daily to see what challenges him and what he seems to overcome helps me to plan the rehab for the next day. By planning day to day helps me to interact with my patient to understand his attitude and efforts. After watching the patient be able to perform an exercise without complaining and willingness to get better is when I believe is the best time to progress in the rehab. It also depends on what type of injury because each injury must have a different approach. For example, an ankle sprain compared to a labrum tear that needed surgery. The patient with the ankle sprain can be pushed hard to get to back to play faster because the recovery time is shorter compared to the patient who had labrum surgery. Overall, the patient needs to progress when the patient is ready. There is no need to push a patient when they are timid about certain exercises. One must work with that patient to overcome the fear in order to progress in the rehab. After the patient has showed they are comfortable with the exercise they should increase in weight or repetitions. This allows the patient to also see progress by going up in weight or repetitions. If the patient sees progress throughout rehab it usually influences them to continue working hard which allows them to advance in their rehab. I personally like to influence my patients both mentally and physically. I know they have a lot going on with class work which can build up a lot of stress, so when they come into the clinic I try and help them forget about all the stress from classes and have them focus on trying to get better with their injury.
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Reflective JournalsThese journal entries express my experience as an athletic training student Archives
April 2019
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