Second Interview Questions

The questions I want to ask:

• Being at the top of your field are you satisfied of where you ended up or do you wish you could change any of your decisions along the way?
• What are some tips that you can give me to make my education years not seem difficult to achieve a high level of education?
• Approximately how many years would it take to get a doctorate's degree?
• What university(s) did you go to, in order to get your degree at? And do you have any references of where to go?
• What is the typical daily routine at the office is like?
• What do you know about the PT field and current issues in the field?

Problem Statement

1) Topic: Physical Therapy
2) Problem: Some patients don't like to cooperate and may be combative depending on how much pain they are in. Patients may also be weak, tired, or sore. So to solve this problem before doing  their hard exercises they should get hydrated and start off moving slowing by either stretching or doing the minimum mobility so that they wont be in too much pain.

3) Problem: Patients don't follow instructions that they are suppose to. They are given directions to do exercises when they are at home but by not doing them slows down the healing process. They should always have some protective gear on around the injured area so the injury wont get worse. The patients always want to be healed as fast as possible but by doing that they need to do their own part at home. By explaining to the patient of what could happen if they didn't do their own exercises on their time could make them realize how important it is. Encouragement and motivation would be helpful so that they could have a positive mind set that they can recover.

Working EQ

So far, you have:

• completed your summer mentorship
• started doing some research
• completed an interview
• and hopefully found a mentor

The Pentagon:
(1) Positive Statement: What positive thing happen as a result of what you have completed so far?

I have been having a great experience from where I go volunteer at. I got to know all of the staff members that work there and they have been so helpful for me. Whenever I go in and ask them if I could ask some questions or even if I am doing hands on treatments they always are happy to inform me about anything that I want to know. They answer all of my questions the best they can and they usually turn into a conversation with all the staff members that would be working there that day. Also, definitely getting the hands on experience is a big plus. At other physical therapy places they would only allow observing and that’s about it. So here at Emeritus I get to experience as if I was an aid or an assistant.

(2) EQ Content: Pick a piece of research or your interview. How has it helped you improve your understanding of your topic?

 From my research I am allowed to go in depth with specific injuries and how to prevent or treat them. Just by reading those articles I learn more about how the body tries to heal itself or how the physical therapist help that process speed up. I have also learned that there are so many specialty P.T’s that work on certain patients or parts of the body, from age groups, sports or the ill. Now that I know about that I will probably have to pick a certain area or be more specific.

(3) What has worked for you so far in the senior project?

Basically everything that I have done for my senior project has benefitted for me. From research to volunteering and also remembering what it was like from my own experience of getting injured.

(4) What hasn't worked so far?

There was one problem that I had encountered with. That was trying to find places to volunteer at. Either the clinic wouldn’t accept volunteers or just when I call their slots for volunteers were already taken. I also wanted to get out of the elderly section of physical therapy and go to a place where they worked on athletes. Those places were the most popular though so I am still trying to find a place that would be perfect according to my senior project topic.

(5) Finding Value: Based on your experience so far,

• What possible question or questions come to mind regarding what you would like to study this year?
• What part of the body is more easily to be injured in?
• Do physical therapist need to learn about everything in the body or would you just study the certain area you want to work with? Ex) age, sport, post-surgery?
• What is your end goal this year with your senior project?

My end goal for my senior project would be probably to have a lot of connections with physical therapists. Maybe even getting an internship somewhere that I volunteer at if that’s even possible. I also hope to gain experience and would leave high school knowing a lot about what classes I should take, what I would need to study and to have a great experience overall.

• Who would you like to talk to you next? Why?

I would love if the head P.T. at Emeritus to talk to me soon. Hopefully I will be able to interview her next. She has gotten her masters and I think even doctors degree and I want to know how she got that far or if her school experience was hard.

Interview Preparation

1. Who do you plan to interview? Why?


I plan to interview my mentor first who is Emily Sevilla. She is physical therapist at Emeritus Assisted Living and Retirement Home. She works in the rehabilitation room and helps older patients recover from injuries or post surgeries. Emily is also a part of this section at Emeritus called skilled nursing. There she gets in patients as well as out patients. Her job consists of helping the patients get their balance back, strengthen there body, and help speed up their healing process. Whenever I go to Emeritus to do my service learning Emily is usually the one that puts me to work, which I love since it’s way better than just sitting and observing everyone do their job. She explains everything from why this happened to the patient to what the body is doing while she works with the patients. I also like to hear from her past experiences, because just from listening to her talk about it gives me ideas of what I should do for my future.

2. You have to ask 5 questions. What additional questions do you plan to ask?


I will arrange additional questions during the interview to be asking as well. Since we always talk and have conversation after conversation I’m sure more questions will be asked. A few questions that I might want to ask that weren’t assigned may be to get some answers or opinions about what colleges I might want to look into. Since I am already starting to look at colleges I think that would help me a lot so I know what direction to look in. I might also want to ask about what is better, to work with in-patients or out-patients? I kind of know the difference between them but I don’t know what the environment would be like as a physical therapist. I want to know as much information that I can before I'm off to college so I know what to look forward to.

Physical Therapy

a. What is your topic ?

My topic is going to be about Physical Therapy.

Why?
I chose this because ever since I got injured and had to go to rehabilitation myself I just thought how I would love helping people recover from injuries. I loved the idea of becoming a physical therapist so bad that I already started volunteering at a rehabilitation building near my house. Just knowing that if I really tried and could become a PT I would be so happy, especially when I work. When I started volunteering I thought to myself that this profession could never get boring and I would be so content. Now if only I could just incorporate my favorite sport, which is volleyball into my project somehow that would be even better! I can't wait to learn more about my topic. I want to help people be able to move and perform functional activities again. Since I know and have had the experience of being treated for rehabilitation, the patients just want to recover as fast as possible and that it's certainly not fun when you can't do even the simplest tasks anymore.

b. And what do you hope to accomplish this year with this topic (connecting your answer to each of the 4 ESLRs)

iPoly Citizen: I plan to help patients that need rehabilitation by assisting them to do their exercises and to being more mobile until they reach their maximum strength. This relates to the me improving as a iPoly citizen because not only am I going to be helping people being able to feel better but I will also get to enjoy the happiness when the patients recover and are able to go back to their lives and are no longer in pain.

Effective Communicator: I plan to get more educated by my mentor by always asking questions and listening to her so that I could be a successful in that same career. This will make me more effective as a learner because I get to interact and assist with my mentor, which would expand my knowledge. I would also be able to get guidance from her and get more connections so that I could go in the right direction for my profession.

Effective Learner: I plan to get more information about programs, schools, and classes that I should take so that I don’t make any mistakes along the way. I want to volunteer and help out as much as I can so that I can have more experience with my field of interest. This will make me more effective as a learner because as I do research I will get the feel of how my future will be like and what I would have to do to get there.

Effective User of Technology: I plan to take photos of my experience of my mentor ship as well as being able to work some of the exercise machines. This will make me more effective as a user of technology because once I finally get to handle machines when I become a physical therapist I would know how to operate them and know what their purpose is.

Summer Mentorship Component

Mentor: Emily Sevilla ( Physical Therapist)
at Emeritus
Number: 909)664-3835

Log:
Log spreadsheet

Literal:

What questions were raised because of the 10 hours of experience? List them.

I had many questions to ask while I was volunteering. Since I had been volunteering there for about 2 years I never really asked questions I just watched and helped the patients recover from their injuries. So I got to think about it and I asked the Physical Therapists that worked there what was the best way to help recover from an injury? They all gave me their opinion and they were very good answers. I also asked what was the difference between a PT (Physical Therapist) and an OT (Occupational Therapist). The easiest way to explain it was that the OT worked on the upper half of the body only and helped the patients do everyday things ex) get in and out of bed. While I was volunteering and helping the PT’s I started asking a lot of questions because I didn’t know what certain exercises did to help the patients and how it would benefit them and what area of the body it works out.

Interpretive:

I think that having a mentor a part of our project would help up a lot in many ways. They would help us by guiding and being informative by giving us the information that we didn't know. It benefits us to be in our mentors shoes by seeing what they do as well. My mentor is Emily Sevilla and she has been great to me! Whenever she helps a patient or lets me help too, she explains why we are doing that specific movement and tells me what the patient has and what they need in order to get better. She gives me terms that I should learn and I usually end up learning new things every time I go in to volunteer.

Applied:


Since like I said I had already been volunteering at Emeritus for 2 years and I got lucky that they had a rehabilitation center there so that made it very easy to find my mentor. As I go in to volunteer, in the beginning I was helping everyone in the room but then I knew I had to pick just one PT. So I ended up picking Emily since she let me help her the most and gave me descriptive information about everything that she was doing.

 

What is the most important thing you gained from this experience? Why?

 I think the most important thing I gained from this experience is understanding how each movement affects your body and how one wrong move and make you in miserable pain. Since my goal is to become a PT I learned the importance of stretching and keeping the body very mobile is a very important key to remember as we get older. As they say “if you don’t move it you will lose it”.  Also, since I was working with older patients who have many medical conditions and diseases there was so much more you have to know and you have to be very cautious so you won’t harm the patient.

 

How did what you did help you choose a topic?

What helped me choose this topic was when I fractured my foot sophomore year. I had to do physical therapy for a couple of months and that was it, I then knew that was what I wanted to do as my career. I love helping people and then to combine it with sports and injuries, it seemed perfect for me. That’s how I knew for sure that would be my topic for my senior project as well since that’s the career that I want to pursue in my future. Plus since I am going to be playing sports such as volleyball during the year I would hope to incorporate that into my project since I know what injuries you can get from playing but I don’t know how to treat them. So I think that would be a very good learning experience for me as well.