Today was my last day shadowing a physical therapist at Dunn Physical Therapy. Today i got to see a very wide variety of patients. I saw a patient that had a hurt neck and needed dry needling on his neck. Another patient I saw today had a hurt back and got dry needling done to relieve the stress on the muscles.

Today I also learned how to make a hot pack. A hot pack is a thick pad that has been in hot water in order to heat it up. It is then covered in a blanket like thing. It is then covered in a towel and then another blanket. They use this for loosening muscles and for receiving the pain after an appointment.

Thank you so much Dunn Physical Therapy for everything you did for me! It was a fun and educational two weeks!

Today I saw lots and lots of neck injuries. So, today I got to watch a lot of working on the notes in the neck in order to relive the pain. However, I did see one knee injury today. She had surgery on her knee and she already had full extension in her knee. Today the physical therapist was working on the bending of the knee. Instead of the regular extension exercises that the patient was normally doing she was instead doing exercises that worked on the flexibility in her knee when she would bend it. (Sorry there is no picture today because there was nothing I could get a picture of that didn’t have a patient in.)

Today I got to shadow several physical therapists. I got to see several repeat patients today. One patient I saw was one that I had seen last week. She had surgery on her knee and was still trying to get full range of motion back. Once she had done her exercises and the physical therapist had stretched out the parents knee she was able to extend it fully. Once she had it fully extended she then put the sour muscles in heat in order to loosen the muscles.

The picture that I have here is of the brace that they used when she had heat on her muscles. This allowed her to keep her leg straight and it helped her straighten her leg more on her own.

Today I was back with my normal PT. We saw a lot of patients today since there is going to be a long weekend and they arnt open on Monday. A few patients that I saw today have had ankle surgery. They were coming for physical therapy in order to strengthen the muscles in there ankles. They worked on a lot of different exercises for the ankle such as balancing on it and also using the stretching bands to stretch there ankles and help to get there full range of motion back.

Today was a much different day then I was used to. Instead of shadowing my regular PT I got to shadow a PT from there pediatrics section. I was able to see the differences in doing pediatrics vs what I had been doing all week. The first patient that I saw today was about 4. He was having trouble with his posture and also staying on track and paying attention. This patient also had a low tone. Low tone means that his muscles are less firm and his joint appear looser. In order to get him to do a lot of the exercises that the PT needed him to do in order to strengthen his muscles she made them into more of games. Unlike when I was shadowing a PT who worked mainly on adults. She was able to work on his sitting posture by giving him bubbles to blow as she corrected his posture. Another thing we did with him was instead of walking to get water we wheelbarrowed to get water. This helped him strengthen his core, which is important in his posture.

Another patient I got to see today was a 10 month old baby. This baby had been favoring his left side and since at that age there bones aren’t as strong his head was starting to become flat on that side. What the PT was doing today was helping the baby roll over to the right side instead of the left. This was very cool to see because I didn’t know about baby’s being able to get a flat side to their head by favoring it.

I thought today was so interesting because it was so new for me and I got to see a different side to physical therapy then I had seen so far.

Today I got to see a lot more dry needling therapy today. There were a lot of patients that had sour muscles and the needles help to access the muscles and dry needles are the best way to release a lot of the tension in the muscles. A lot of the patients complain about how painful they were, but after the needles would come out the patients loved the results.

Another patient who was having neck pain needed to use a machine. The machine is a retracting machine. The purpose of the machine is to stretch out the vertebrae in the neck in order to release the pressure on the nerves which release pain to different parts of the body. The patient lays on the table and there neck goes in between the two sides

(sorry this is not of the machine put together. I couldn’t get a picture of it put together because we can’t have pictures of the patients). The PT then adjusts the sides to fit to the patient’s neck. The machine then slightly lifts the neck to relieve the pressure off of the nerves which helps relieve the patient’s pain.