Blog 10: Senior Project Update

(1) What are you currently doing in your independent component?

I am volunteering at another physical therapy place where there are younger peeople and the injuries are more from sports. Since I am going to be focusing more on the athletic side of injuries i needed to get a bigger picture of how physical therapy is for those types of injuries other than just from old age or surgeries.


(2) What is a recent piece of research (article, interview, or audio-visual) that have you reviewed you would say was significant in helping you understand where to go next in your senior project? The piece of research should be something you reviewed in November. Please explain what you learned and where are you going next because of this piece of research.

This was one of the shorter videos that I had watched this month but in the little given time it helped me a lot to understand how technique is very important and critical.

This is the reason why I knew that I needed to look for another physical therapy place where they tend to have more patients from sports related injuries.



(3) Provide evidence from your independent component or the piece of research as something you recently did. For example, a photo of something you working on for your independent component or your notes from the video you watched.

The video actually made me realize that for what I thought was exercising the "right way" was actually wrong. He talks about how some people who try to recover themseleves do the wrong movements. We need to be moving diagnal not just staight up/down and left/right motions becuase in real life we move in all sorts of directions. Also, when we want to stretch and exercise our injured areas, the proper approach would be to to strengthen the injured area along with the rest of your body. Minor imbalances could also be the reason why most injuries occur. When one side or part of the body is weaker than the other side, you are more likely to get an injury. Therfore it is recommended to exercise the entire body to keep it well-balanced.

Extra Blog 2

Here is my mentor: Emily Savilla

 

 

She is a very hard working, dedicated physical therapist. I love going to my learning service everytime becuase when I get to work with her she also has something for me to do. She makes sures that I get to help (do some hands on type of stuff with the patients) and get well informed about what she does and why.

 

I thought this was cute. It is a picture that they have on their wall in the physical therapy room. Everytime someone completes their "rehab" and they are ready to be on their own, the staff takes a picture of them and gives them a certificate saying they did it. It's very inspiring to others and it also makes the paitents appreictate all that the physical therapists and the OT's have done to help them reover.

Extra Blog 1

 

Here are some pictures that I took at my learning service. At Emeritus they have a physical therapy room with different exercising techniques and equipment to choose from.

 

 

 

Here in this picture you can see many different equipment. The bed is for patients to lay down and do their stretching with their physical therapist. They have canes and weight bars in the bucket. The canes of course are for the older patients and for those who need help walking for an example if they have had any type or surgery or injury that may make them weak. Also there is a peg board with many weights that can be used to be strapped to ankles or wrists when exercising, there are different amount of pounds to choose from as well.

 

 

(Sorry for the messiness)

These are the steps that patients use to help gain their balance and to slowly learn how to walk again. It helps with the bending of the knee mainly. The hand bars are very helpful for what I saw, the patients need to hold on so that they don't have to put too much pressure on the injured site if it's too hard or if it hurts too much.

 

This is called "the bars". It helps patients to recover from any leg injuries. I have helped many people walk on here and made sure they didn't lose their balance. (:

 

 

This is my favorite exercise machine right here. It helps the body to stay in shape and to be mobile. You move your arms and legs on this exercise bike-like machine. It can tell you your heart rate, how long you've been on there, and you can change the intensity to however much your body can take. You will definitely get a great exercise out of this!

Science Fair Proposal

1. What is your topic?

 Physical Therapy

2. What is the driving problem behind your experiment and the quote by an expert to support that problem? (Expert citation must be MLA format.)

“Researchers around the world have found that knee pain is common in people who are 65 and older. A recent British study in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism found that nearly two-thirds of women aged 50 and over experienced persistent, incident, or intermittent knee pain. And in the United States, about 25 percent of women and 16.5 percent of men over age 70 report having knee pain, according to a paper in the December 2011 Annals of Internal Medicine.” By Eric Metcalf, MPH. "Why Knee Pain Worsens With Age." EverydayHealth.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Nov. 2012. <http://www.everydayhealth.com/knee-pain/why-knee-pain-worsens-with-age.aspx>.

3. What is your hypothesis? (Must be in If-Then form.)      

If a person with a knee injury goes to physical therapy then does the gender and age affect their recovery?

4. Write a paragraph summary of how you will perform the experiment. Include the tools you plan on using.

During my experiment I will be measuring time(Time it took to recover), mobility(Did they get full mobility back), and strength(Did they get all of their strength back).I will observe and interview patients and their physical therapists, research medical journals, and make a physical model of a knee. The model will describe the physics, mathematics, and material science behind our body structures. Also, another way to show my statistics is by recording the information and putting it into charts and graphs of the data. For the physical model I plan on showing the effects on age vs. gender on the structure of the knee. By showing this it will tell how the female and male body structure differs.

5. Select one of the following Project Categories for your experiment:
Physics

Blog 9: Working EQ and Possible Answers

1) What was the working EQ you used during your presentation?

ž  My EQ that I used for the presentation was: "What can a physical therapist do to help a patient recover from an injury and prevent it from reoccurring?"

2) Did you decide to revise your working EQ after your presentation? If so, write your revised EQ here. If not simple write "I am not going to revise my EQ at this time".

ž  I am not going to revise my EQ at this time. I already changed it from my rough draft 10 minute lesson plan.

3) What are possible answers to your current working EQ?

ž  R.I.C.E.

ž  Inform about nutrition

ž  Recommend safety gear ex) wrap, tape, guards

ž  Have patient accept their injuries ( physiological side)

ž  Teach the patient proper techniques ex) stretching and exercising