Access to Articles

As much literature review as we can do in the PT field, it doesn't mean so much when you do not have full access to the article of interest.

I was able to find this article for a particular patient of mine who is a tennis instructor, but have not been able to gain access to it. If anyone out there can share access with me I would greatly appreciate it, as would my patient.

It is kind of ridiculous to be asked to pay 30 bucks or so for an article. Unfortunately, I cannot access my Universities databases from home and with the hours I put into clinic now I don't have the chance to get over there. I need to get over there so I can get my bar code re-done to re-gain access to some of these journals...

Back To Basics

Muscle of the week, at some point I was actually trying to make this a regular segment...

Serratus Anterior

Innervation: Long Thoracic Nerve

Just to be fair, there is also a serratus posterior inferior and superior.

I know this doesn't make for the best blog post, but I just put together a pretty good powerpoint on this muscle with a whole lot of literature review regarding the SA - available upon request :-D

Monday

Two great quotes I just saw and wanted to get down somewhere... what better place than here

"Clear minds - full hearts - can't lose." Friday Night Lights

"You got three kinds of people in football, those that make it happen, those that wait for it to happen, and those that say what just happened" Just saw that in a commercial.

and walking by another PT clinic after clinic today I saw in the window the slogan "The art of healing, the art of science." This is a sad thievery of the APTA slogan.

Clinic was good today, I have some great patients, and am getting more and more comfortable with the flow of the clinic. We get a lot of patients at any given time but there is a good system setup to give them all their needed attention. Seeing the patients get great results fairly quickly is a great thing. Back to reading more articles... eventually I will start posting summaries of some of these more relevant articles.

Have a great day.

Prevention

In theory, prevention will decrease the amount of patients and thus money PT's will see. However, as musculoskeletal (and then some) specialists there will always be a reason for PT's to be around, so prevention is a great thing that should become a standard in health care. I am just starting to look into some of the research out there about how prevention can in fact prevent injuries.

Being in clinic now though, I see so many injuries that could have been easily avoided had the patient/client spent some time strengthening certain muscles. The hip stabilizes the lower extremity and the shoulder does a very similar job for the upper extremity. The core, specifically the transversus abdominis and multifidus, is oft neglected and can go a long way in preventing low back pain. More and more evidence is coming out to support these ideas, moreso these make biomechanical sense. Poor posture is another very common culprit in causing pain and visits to the doctor. Your mother was right when she told you to sit up straight...

I am studying in clinic more than I used to when I had classes, it is a little odd, but again makes sense. Speaking of which I am gonna go read something.
Stay strong.

Caught Up

I have just been busy, no excuses just results...

So I finished my last final of my academic career (hopefully) the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Started clinic last Monday and have been greatly enjoying it. The patients are all very pleasant, the staff is a lot of fun, and I am learning a great deal. I hope to have more detailed posts in the future, but it is truly an exhausting experience. Along with everything else in life, I get to pretty much work 50 or so hours a week while not getting paid and still paying tuition... puts a bit of a strain on finances. Just as a side note, there are programs where you get paid for these final affiliations.

I have been keeping up with journals and other blogs and PT related websites and the info borders on overwhelming. But what keeps me going is seeing patients get better and knowing that the more I learn the better I will be able to get them better... very eloquent, eh? My brain is a little tired.

Other topics worth discussing from clinic are:

1. My case report topic will likely be a patient who had fractured his talus and after about 2 months of PT treatment was not getting better. It was radiographically confirmed that he had AVN of the talus. I first saw him when he returned to PT after having retrograde drilling done to fix the AVN.
2. My CI has used the Functional Movement Screen with a minor league pitcher from my favorite baseball team (shh) that we are working with. There has been some recent evidence in support of this as a predictor of injury. This is a very interesting concept in my opinion and I think this will be something I will be following as more comes out about it.
3. There is a lot of Pilates work
4. There is a huge focus on biomechanics
   

I look forward to updating you all on the many concepts and ideas that I will be picking up in the coming weeks. This is such an exciting part of the PT process. Hope you are all happy and healthy!