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.
As a senior ATS, I do feel like I have modeled professionalism as a student. Being in this role, I have been able to put aside different worries and thoughts, and be able to fill the role as an ATS. Whenever I walk into the clinic, I do not bring any of problems in there with me. When I come into the clinic, I am able to focus solely on my clinical experience. I have learned how to interact with patients that are either my age or older, and I am able to treat them all the same. I believe this also allows me to be a little bit superior to them because of my role as an ATS. I also feel like I am able to mentor younger ATSs. I believe I have been really open about being helpful to other ATSs. I also have a mentee, who I have helped for the past two years. I do feel like I am a mentor to other students that are not in the AT program. I believe that this major shows that there is a lot of work and commitment that goes into every day life as an ATS. So, I feel like other students see ATSs as very smart students. There are a lot of younger students who have come to me for help in many of their classes. I have also been a peer mentor for two years. I have spent three semesters with three different students. I feel like I have really impacted their commitment and dedication to their school work. I also think that being an athlete has helped molded me as a role model. Being a leader on and off the court has helped me learn how to talk to certain people. I feel like I am a good resource for others to come and talk to. I do believe this major has really shaped me to not only look at the athlete, but to look deeper. There is also more to a person, and this major has taught me how to read each person. I can watch a person walk into the clinic, and I can already tell if something more than just an injury is bothering them. This allows me to open up a relationship with them because it shows me noticing and caring about their problems. Lastly, I believe this major has shown to others that I am a very trustworthy person. Because the athlete can confide me in, I believe this shows to them that I am a good role model to come to when they are struggling with something.
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My most challenging class for me this semester is my connections course. I don’t think its very challenging, however, there is a lot of work that is required for this class. I usually have an assignment due every class. Whether this is a reading assignment, writing a paper, or turning in a project. The required assignments take me a while to complete because I am researching my own project. Not only am I researching on my own project, but there is a lot reading required because I also have to learn about Cuba which is what the whole class is about. So there is a lot of work I need to put into this course. However, I have really enjoyed this class because it has made me come out of my comfort zone because I have to present most Fridays. The research project for this course is very interesting because we were allowed to pick whatever type of group/culture that we wanted. I picked a subject I wasn’t familiar with because I wanted to be able to learn more about them. Due to this, I spend a lot of time researching and reading about the subject in order to answer or respond to the following assignment. I struggled at the beginning because I did not realize how much time I would spend completing the assignments. It took me until this week to figure out how I should plan doing the assignments. For this course, I have an assignment due both Monday and Friday of the week. I have learned that the assignments due on Friday take a lot more time to complete than Monday. The Friday assignments are usually projects due that I either have to make a video, poster board, or book review. These assignments are fun, however, they take a lot of time to get completed. I also want them to be good, so I work really hard on them because I have to present them in front of the class. So, I have planned starting the Friday assignment on Monday. This gives me enough time to ask the professor if I have any questions on the project, and it gives me enough time to get the assignment completed. The assignments that are due on Monday I complete over the weekend. I really enjoy this class, but it takes away from allowing me to use that time for other classes for my major.
Throughout my experiences of picking a clinical question, I began by just leaning on others for their ideas. I used to be content with allowing others to guide me in a direction. I did not want to stand up and do something on my own. I wanted others to have an opinion, and I would lean on them with their ideas. Recently, I have grown past this fear. I have now became more vocal for myself. This began last year when I start my own clinical question. Last semester my clinical question came from my own clinical patient because I was curious about the surgery and restrictions they could obtain. Researching on a subject that I was very interested in was a lot easier than doing what my group had selected like I did in the previous years. Since this change I am trying to pursue, I have switched clinical partners. I am very excited for the new change. My clinical partner this semester is Meg Greene. We have been talking for a while about what type of clinical question we wanted to begin research on. It came across our attention that we were both interested in the heart. I was personally interested in the heart because I feel less educated about the subject due to how much it contains. We were also very intrigued by the heart after learning how to read an EKG during preseason and sudden cardiac arrest. So we decided that we wanted to expand our education and research the heart. However, we weren’t sure where we wanted to narrow our question down to. We brought Melissa into our question because we needed help in selecting where we should go. After multiple conversations, the key aspect Meg and I were interested in researching was diagnostic testing. So this began leading up to our clinical question. Our clinical question is “in athletes ages 16-22, what diagnostic testing is more reliable in determining the presence of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.” Our clinical committee members include Melissa Davis, Beth Funkhouser, Randy Smith, and Dr. Handy. We picked this committee to have array of education talents. So far we have been doing research in order to narrow our search to define a certain diagnostic test. We are working towards a broad question, and we are hoping to have a certain diagnostic test we can research throughout the semester.
This is going to be a very different journal for me. I am going to write about an evaluation experience that actually happened today. I have recently completed two evaluations of the ankle, and for some reason I just forgot everything. I don’t know if I was just thinking that it was the ankle and the evaluation would be easy, however, I really actually struggled through the evaluation. This was able to open my eyes to how I am supposed to perform an evaluation. I would skip steps throughout my evaluation process just trying to go straight to special tests because I thought that’s the only way to diagnosis an injury. However, that is not the case, and I am really glad I went through this mistake. Today, I was presented a patient who was having back pain. I first thought to myself, man this is going to be hard, but actually I was able to simplify the situation and come out on top. I used my previous experiences to use the history questions as my most important part of my evaluation. This allowed me to already start brainstorming about what injuries this could be. After listening to the history questions, I then took the questions and applied them to my palpation process. The patient’s symptoms presented a burning pain shooting up the back and pain along the erector spinae. After, I moved to range of motion I learned the patient could not perform trunk flexion, extension, or rotation. I used this information to think about the injuries that can affect these motions. In the back of my mind I was thinking this could have something to do with the discs. However, I did not want to think this was the only injury it could be. I wanted to keep an open mind throughout my evaluation process because I want to make sure I have ruled as much out as I can to be confident on my diagnosis. After finishing my evaluation, I came to the conclusion that there could potentially be a herniated disc. However, the patient felt very tight. So, Melissa and I decided that we were going to treat the symptoms, and reevaluate the patient in a couple of days. This experience has really spoke volumes to me. I have realized that just following an evaluation sheet is not the way to go. I need to start expanding my evaluations skills to not perform like a book.
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Reflective JournalsThese journal entries express my experience as an athletic training student Archives
April 2019
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