Fall Semester/Money

Tomorrow I start the academic portion of the fall as I have completed my 6 weeks of clinical affiliation. Classes I will take are Musculoskeletal Diagnosis and Management, Adult Neuro Diagnosis and Management, PT Across the Life Span, and CardioPulmonary Pathology. All 4 classes will occur Monday through Wednesday, so I get a 4 day weekend, woot woot.

Now to piggyback off of another student PT who has blogged recently about sudden cardiac death. There has been a recent rash of deaths among young athletes in Texas and after having read her entry about this, I saw an ESPN headline about a Colorado high school football player that collapsed and died on the field. The 17 year old 6 ft 1 in. 210 pounder had a previous heart condition.

The Real Rehab Blogger did mention the idea of nationally screening athletes which is something that is done in Italy and has reduced sudden cardiac deaths in athletes by 89%. Since the programs inception in Italy in 1979, 2% of athletes have been disqualified from competition. Of course, the biggest issue in America is money. The screening while it may save lives will be a very costly process. This issue of money also was brought up in all of the steroid talk. Testing for illegal substances is something that would be ideally implemented nationwide even on the high school level but the costs are very prohibitive. Even AED's which have been shown to be easy to use and very efficient have had resistance in some PT clinics because of the cost.

In the PT professions road to Vision 2020 Evidence Based Practice is a main focus which requires money for research funding. Money money money people...

I hope I am doing my part by spending a bunch of money on education and donating what I can to the Foundation for Physical Therapy and Physical Therapy-Political Action Committee.

Speaking of which how big a waste are my New York Yankees this year... oy