Blog 16: Answer 2

1. My EQ: How can a physical therapist best ensure a patient is effectively cared for in an outpatient P.T program?

2. First Answer: A thorough initial assessment by the physical therapist is the cornerstone of effective care in any kind of therapy, physical or otherwise.

3. Second Answer: Proper patient education will ensure the most effective care in a physical therapy program.

4. Justification:

• When the patient knows what is happening in their body and how it correlates with the interventions they've been prescribed, they are more likely to carry out their treatment and be active in the healing process
• Knowing how the body works (what it can do and how it can do it) is key when it comes to preventing injury in the first place. Educating the public on the the vehicles their consciousness operates will help to prevent accidents.
• When a patient is well informed about their condition and injury, it decreases the chance that they will perform their prescribed exercises wrong and injure themselves further.

5. So far, the meeting brief of "Capturing Value: Increasing Efficiency in Health Care" by the National Institute for Health Care Management

6. My mentor straight up told me that education in physical therapy is more valuable than the therapy itself. Without proper education you could very well be running in place when it comes to the healing process

7. As of right now, I've barely scratched the surface of my second answer. I know just from reading the NIHCM brief that the depth of research I can do on this answer is pretty vast. I'm looking forward to my next interview to see if I can gain some insight on the topic of health care education.

Blog 15: Independent Component 2 Approval

1. For my 2nd independent component, I'll be taking a free online course in anatomy and physiology provided by Carnegie Mellon University's Open Learning Initiative. The class consists of 15 units and a total of 57 different modules to work on. If I spend 30 minutes a day studying and going through the course, I'll have well over 30 hours before the independent component is due.

2. Each of the modules has little quizzes and the units have tests, so I'm planning on taking screenshots and/or printing out my tests and quizzes to show that I actually completed the course.

3. I figure this is a great way to supplement my knowledge on physical therapy while simultaneously going to mentorship each week and applying that knowledge to some extent. I've found that a good amount of the things my mentor shares with me take some time to settle in my brain before I can wrap my head around the concepts, and I think it's because I haven't really taken a straight up anatomy course yet. I had some basic anatomy in sophomore year, but not enough to make me confident in my knowledge.

4. See Senior Project Hours

Blog 14: Independent Component #1

LITERAL
a.)"I, Ian Kam, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work."

b.)My mentor Andrea Haston DPT, ATC, helped me complete this component by allowing me to shadow her at Casa Colina.

c.) See hours log.

d.) My independent component was 30 extra hours of mentorship.

INTERPRETIVE
There's only so much you can get out of looking up articles and reading medical journals. Nothing really beats the real thing when it comes to medical knowledge. Annie is very passionate about what she does and is very accommodating when I tell her the requirements of my senior project. Every time I go in to do mentorship I learn a little more about anatomy, patient care, and patient relations, all of which are invaluable to forming answers to my EQ. I don't really have physical evidence of my experience, but you can contact my mentor and confirm with her that I put in the hours.

APPLIED
Well the foundation of PT lies in education, and applying knowledge of the body and it's systems to help people get better. I'm not really sure how to provide an example of how my understanding was improved; I'm guessing that would be reflected in my Lesson #2 and Final Presentation grades? I've learned that patient education is key, and that effective care in PT is dependent on both the health care professional's intervention and the health care consumer's compliance and understanding of what's going on. I don't know if that's a good answer. I guess because ALL knowledge pertaining to physical therapy is applied knowledge it's sort of difficult to answer.