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.
Since my freshmen year, I feel like I am a completely different person. I believe the student I am now compared to the student I was four years ago is not the same person at all. I feel like I have grown and molded to become the student I should have always been. My freshman year, I was not sure what I was about to get into. All I knew is I wanted to make friends and be a part of extracurricular activities. However, as a senior, I have a completely different perspectives by focusing my time on school work and making last minute memories with my closest friends and of course my athletic training family. I did not think I would survive through the athletic training program. Especially if I would have been the same student I was as a freshmen there would have been no way I would have made it through. Looking back now, I knew I was dedicated and could work hard throughout it, but there were a lot of times I had doubt within myself that I was smart enough to be a part of this program. I believe my junior year was the year that helped me become the student I am. I was in four very hard classes while playing sport, and I never thought I would have made it out of that semester passing. However, here I am. I have actually made it to graduation. My whole college career has been a lesson to me, and I am so thankful I have had this experience. I am very excited for my future now. I have worked really hard these past four years, and now its finally my time to put this into real world scenarios. The next steps for me is to finish my pre requisites to get into graduate school. I want to get my masters in physicians assistant and be both MPA and ATC. With this year off, I am going to be applying to graduate schools and helping out with the volleyball program at Emory & Henry. I also want to continue better my skills in athletic training. Over the summer, I hope to be able to help Mike with some tournaments and continue to be a part of different clinical experiences opportunities.
My four years at Emory & Henry College has really changed the person I was in high school. This experience is something I will never forget. I have made so many memories with both my classmates and preceptors. This was truly an honor to be a part of the athletic training program. Through all early mornings to studying in the depot until 3 am for exits, I will always be thankful for what I have learned and become throughout this journey. Thank you, Beth for allowing me this opportunity.
1 Comment
Throughout my experience as an athletic training student, I have been exposed to multiple different types of healthcare providers. By being able to participate in this experience, I have learned and gained skills that I can apply now and in the future. These skills I am currently developing have shown to me that every healthcare provider is very different. When I first started in the program, I was very nervous to be in the clinic with the current athletic trainers. I was afraid to say something wrong or not know an answer. However, as a senior athletic training student, this has completely changed. They do not care if I am wrong or don’t know an answer because they want to teach me. Throughout my experience with this healthcare field I have gained a lot more confidence when speaking with them. Now I am not afraid of being wrong, but I know now I can use different types of medical terms and they will know exactly what I am saying. Another type of healthcare field that I have gained different skills from is being with Dr. Handy and Dr. Hannula. Both of these individuals have taught me a lot being in the healthcare field. They have taught and showed me how to communicate with patients and that there are some things that you don’t even need to share with the patients. However, when communicating with them, they mainly have taught me to be myself. They want me to be very interactive with them and the patients. Being able to engage in the conversation they are having and asking questions after is the best way to communicate with them. They want the students to be able to understand what they are doing and not be afraid to ask any questions. I have learned that I should not be scared to use either medical terms or even general terms when asking them questions or responding to their questions. Lastly, I have experience times where some other healthcare providers do not know what an athletic trainer is and they talk down to our profession in general. When I was observing during my clinical rotations at the emergency room, I experienced a nurse who did not know what an athletic trainers position even consisted of. I am not sure exactly what she said, but in general thought I was a “trainer.” During this situation, I didn’t want to correct them and overstep my position when I was observing so I never said anything. But I would try to ask more medical questions to allow them to see that I was informed on many injuries and how to treat them. I think the biggest key that I have learned when communicating with different healthcare providers is to never be afraid to ask a question if you are unsure of an injury, diagnosis, or what is happening in general. All healthcare providers want to teach students what they know and they are never looking down on the students for not knowing the answer.
My strengths and weakness have been fluctuating a lot since I began this program. I believe my biggest weakness is confidence in myself, which I have always struggled with. This has been one of my biggest challenges I have faced throughout being in the program. I always feel like I need another person to justify my answer. Even though I may 100% know the answer, I always feel like I need someone else to take a second look at something or to validate my answer. This has continued to be a goal for myself every semester because I want to believe in myself. I know that I am very educated on the material, and I need perform and practice more evaluations to get my confidence up. I believe this semester has been the first semester I have been able to perform an evaluation on an athlete and report back to my preceptor with my diagnosis. I am able to do everything on my own (so far) without reaching out to my preceptor when I am lost. I have been trying to prove to myself that if there may be something I am unsure of in an evaluation, but I can keep going and try different things to find what the problem contains. I believe my strengths this semester have slightly changed a little. I think my greatest strength is my problem solving skills and hard work/dedication. I really enjoy solving problems which is something that I think I am good at. I believe I can work well with others, so this makes this strength easier for me. I am able to take any type of problem and either find a solution, or show others a way a guide to the solution. I believe I am a people pleaser which helps me to use my strength of problem solving. I enjoy being faced with a challenge and finding whatever way I can to solve it. When I have encountered a challenge with something, I try really hard to complete that task. This brings in my other strength of being a hard worker. When I am faced with challenges, I work really hard to complete them. I put a lot of dedication into these tasks because I enjoy finding the results to something. I have been trying to improve my weakness by putting myself into situations where I need to only rely solely on myself. This will help me to believe in myself and also prove to me that I am capable of being confident in myself. I want others to see I am confident in myself, so they will trust me when performing an evaluation or helping them with an injury. I am also going to continue to solving problems by working hard and being dedicated to any certain situation.
Currently, I have not started a critical appraisal in ATR 462, however, we have been critically appraising articles together in class. We were asked to list a few things you would like to know more research about in class, and I picked thoracic outlet syndrome and second impact syndrome. I am not 100% sure my research articles will include this, however, this have really sparked in interest to me, and I would like to know more about the subject. My experience with this has had its ups and downs. When I was first introduced to this project I wasn’t fully aware of what all this included. There is many types of appraisals that go into project. At first, I was really confused on how this worked because I did not understand the concept of the scales because they all seemed so similar to me. After doing extra reading outside of class, I feel like I have a better understanding of what some of these scales consist of. However, I still do not feel very confident with them, but hopefully that will change after we spend more time on them! We have been focusing on the PEDRO scale in class. I feel a little bit more confident with them right now. At first, I was very hesitant with my answers on the PEDRO scale, but I think the more practice with these the more confident I will feel when critically appraising different research. I think the biggest challenge for me is being able to identify if I would consider it a yes or a no on the questions relating to the scales. I am able to find them in the text, but some of the questions began becoming challenging because I wasn’t looking for the correct answer. Brianne also explained if we are able to justify our answers then sometimes it could be a yes or a no. So at first I was a little confused, but I think I am getting a little better at justifying my answers to the questions. I am excited to begin this project because this is something I have never done before while researching. In the past, I have focused on the data of the research articles. I have never actually looked into any type of research before beyond collecting data from it. So this has been something very new to me, and I am excited to learn something new.
|
Reflective JournalsThese journal entries express my experience as an athletic training student Archives
April 2019
|