Review: Day Nine

Reviewed more muscle diagrams at work today. Had a good time of it, though I was distracted by my impending resignation from the library, which I sent in to the main administrative offices. One door closing, a much brighter, nicer one opening. Can't complain about that!

Review: Day Eight

More muscle diagrams. Been going over the physical therapy textbooks though. They have some interesting ways of putting it all together that make this seem like more than just a bunch of memorization. It's definitely been worth it to take a look.

I'm hoping when time comes to apply all this knowledge, at least SOME of it will stick. So far it's been eye-opening how much review there is to do in so little time, plus how easily you tend to forget the things you studied when you were in "test mode." I remember going over the nerves and their functions by myself at a local coffee shop and literally just telling myself to "run through them again" if I wasn't 100%. I'm hoping a similar approach will be helpful here (I did well in the nervous system sections of A&P I, after all).

Anyone out there ever had something you just had to get 100% on, regardless of how much of a struggle it seemed? I'd love to know in the comments.

I've been at this pre-physical therapy stuff for so long now it's starting to feel old hat. And I've only been at it a week and a half!

C'mon, school!

Review: Day Seven

Still more muscle diagrams. The muscles of the extremities are the worst. The head, face, and trunk muscles are fine, I have them all down for the most part (only in name and position, not O/I/A/N), but the arm/leg muscles have a lot of little stabilizer muscles that all have a very specific function with very specific origin/insertion/action/innervation.

So, it's been less than fun, you could say!

Anyway. I'll have more about the arm/leg muscles throughout the week, probably.

Review: Day Six

More review. Basic neurology this time. Gotta get those cranial nerves down. Usually I love talking about neurology because it's by far one of the most fascinating and complicated systems in the body.

Reviewing material to get re-acclimated, however, less so.

A friend lent me his textbooks from when he attended the program a few years ago, so I'm trying to integrate some of the information in those books with my old anatomy text. It's actually going far better than I expected.

Anyone out there ever had a similar experience? Trying to study a bunch of things at once and just trying out different ways of integrating said material? I don't believe in the old "sleep with your book under your pillow" tripe a lot of old teachers used to joke about doing but I'm willing to try almost anything.

Weekend Article: Posture shirts

So I recently mined the American Physical Therapy Association’s (APTA) Web site for a topic I could write about in my first weekend big-issue article when I came across a blurb about a Wall Street Journal article on “posture shirts.”

I read the article (which was a little more of a review than a proper article) and while it had its share of upsides and downsides to the product, it had a much more important underlying message, one which has been with physicians and therapists alike: this is a great product, but by no means is it a panacea for all your aches. In order to more fully improve one’s posture, effort is still required on the part of the patient.

It should be noted that, with this being a general article on the health and well-being of their readers, the Wall Street Journal is not by any means a scholarly research organization that devises experiments and performs research based on furthering the community built by scientists and physicians alike. While I’m sure their reporters are well-meaning and have no ill will toward their readers, it’s also not entirely certain that they have all the proper data with which to give a completely unbiased opinion of any products endorsed or otherwise mentioned on their pages.

All that being said, it does seem that these shirts have positive results with a large portion of their clientele, which includes athletes and trainers.

According to the report, the shirts use “elastic bands to press gently on upper back and shoulder muscles, giving them a ‘mini-massage’ and helping to activate the muscles” (Johannes 2014) which is expected to help you improve your posture while sitting or standing. AlignMed Inc., the company responsible for creating the shirts and partially funding the studies, has lightweight and heavyweight models for $95 and $195, respectively.

The preliminary findings of studies performed on major and minor athletes have been somewhat positive, but scientists say that more research is required to give a more conclusive resolution (Johannes 2014). It should be noted too that while the shirts have shown improvements in posture, all patients given the shirts were under the guidance of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the University of Southern California’s (USC) Keck School of Medicine. This means that the patients, while athletes (mainly professional baseball and golf players), were under the care of not only the president and founder of AlignMed Inc., but also a team of researchers dedicated to studying the effects of the shirts on posture. They were patients who typically use their arms frequently in their sport, such as pitchers. It’s also interesting to point that, among the baseball pitchers studied, “difference in pitching speeds wasn't statistically significant over the entire three-inning test but there was a significant improvement in blood flow to the pitching arm” (Johannes 2014), according to Dr. C. Thomas Vangsness, a professor of Orthopedic Medicine at USC.

Most importantly, and I believe more to the point, these posture shirts have shown some improvements in patients over time, but “it's also important to correct the underlying issues that may be causing posture problems, such as an imbalance between strong pectoral muscles and weaker back muscles, says Timothy Sell, a physical therapist and associate professor in the department of sports medicine and nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh” (Johannes 2014).  This quote I believe sums up any and all products shown to improve balance and/or posture issues. While the symptoms of one issue may be gone, the underlying problem causing said symptoms is the real enemy. Knowing the difference can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars on unnecessary treatments.

I’d like to end this article by simply stating that, with all of the wonderful technology we have available, it’s important to realize that the elements of human effort and care are needed when discussing matters of health and well-being. We need to remember that fancy tech products are not the only things responsible for caring for us; we have to take responsibility for our own well-being, first and foremost.

Johannes, Laura. (2014). Can a shirt help improve your posture? The Wall Street Journal Online: Aches and Claims. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/articles/can-a-shirt-help-improve-your-posture-1405980827.

Review: Day Five

Today I had to go back to work at my library job (which I've been intermittently doing this week) so I couldn't get a whole lot of study/review time in, but I did break out the muscle O/I/A/N sheets and start to glance at them a bit. It's hard to study on 15 minutes of break time, however, so I think I'll have to give it another go later on tonight perhaps.

I'll be finishing up my review work this week and you won't see a post from me on Saturday (Saturdays will be my off days/research for big article days). I'll pop back on Sunday though and give the "long article" thing a go for the first of it. I have a few ideas in the pipeline, but I have yet to fully form them in my head and research them. Again, this is something that requires more time and preparation than I'm clearly giving it at the moment...

I'd be interested in hearing topics from any of you out there who might be learning about the human body or anything physical therapy/medical related. I can even make it about something fitness oriented (sport physiology totally overlaps with the purpose of this blog) as long as we concern ourselves with covering the topic in some level of technical detail. Maybe to give an example: the physiology of gait training/how it relates to balance and performance in sports? As opposed to just a general article about walking upright.

You get the idea.

I'll be thinking about it. I'll get back to you on Sunday.

Review: Day Four

Decided to kind of take it easy with the memorization today and mostly reflect on what I've learned the last few days. Taking in manageable chunks of information at a time. Find (or make) some questions to test my knowledge, answer (or look up answer), rinse and repeat.

So you could say it's been a bit hard translating 3-3 1/2 chapters into one long study session, but my hope is that if I simply keep at it long enough it'll stick.

This is how I spent most of my time in A&P, basically, just going over the fundamentals. Luckily my textbook has exercises that put my knowledge to better use than simply "knowing the answer;" we had a whole section of clinical thinking exercises that place our terms in realistic situations we may or may not encounter, and had us thinking through the problems until we came to proper conclusions (it's almost like you have a bit of lee-way in terms of said conclusions; more than one way to peel a potato, so the expression goes).

So that's been a fun reprieve. Any of you out there enjoy studying A&P so much you can't wait to get to those sections? They do help put things in perspective. I also enjoyed creating case studies surrounding health dilemmas and having to think them through with my classmates. I've never felt so happy putting "hypoglycemia" on a piece of paper when we came to the diagnosis.

Review: Day Three

I'm pretty much spending all my time on histology and cells today. It's been a long time since I had to even look at a cell through a microscope, much less talk about mitochondria and epithelial cells. I've always hated discussing those chapters, they were never my strong suit. I'm more of a bones/nerves/muscles kinda guy myself.

Speaking of which, bones/nerves/muscles are, from what I understand, the majority of the review I absolutely need to have memorized and able to quickly recall when thinking about the human body. I guess I really do need a lot more than that, but I've been hearing a lot about daily tests in which you need to know proper origins/insertions/nervations for each muscle in every major muscle group.

So that's fun. I might need to work on that, especially.

What were some of your strengths/weaknesses when it came to studying/working with the concepts of A&P? What did some of you out there enjoy or hate about your favorite/hated section? I really wanna know!

Review: Day Two

Things are coming along a little better. I started off with the utmost basic of topics yesterday (organization of the body, cells and organelles, etc.) and am now onto the chemistry review -- which typically serves to remind you of the things you may have forgotten in Chem 101. It’s all fairly simple, and a diligent student like myself (I can hear my family and friends laughing at that one) should be able to recognize most of the major concepts on a test or review of some sort, given one.

I know full well my study time is not going to move as quickly as this. Pretty soon I’ll be spending an entire afternoon on trying to remember all the bones and their markings (which was NOT some of my favorite material to remember, regardless of how useful it is).

If any of you out there are or were in PT school (or med school, or nursing school, etc.) and had to take A&P as a course, what were some of your favorite/least favorite things about your courses? What made you want to come to class every day, and/or what made you completely hate it? Let me know in the comments!

Also, if any of you have any improvements and/or comments/criticisms about the blog, let me know too! I’d like to hear your opinions. The amount of planning that goes into the content of this blog is very stream-of-consciousness, so if there are things I can implement that would maybe streamline things a little bit (I’ve thought of opening a Twitter and sending out tweets about new posts, maybe I’ll do that for weekend posts? I dunno), I’d like to hear your opinions on the matter. Help me help you!

Review: Day One

My big orientation day is August 12. Until then, I’m studying like a first-time A&P student taking his first large exam: trying to cram as much information in on one day as I can remember.

I did fairly well in A&P 1 and 2 when I took them over a year ago, but everyone who’s been in school as long as I have knows full well the rule “if you don’t use it, you lose it.” NEVER is this truer than when studying something as complex as the human body. NEVER. So here I am, filling out sections on a review guide on the human body when I realize that half the material looks almost brand-new. Not a great way to start. A friend of mine once told me that he and his classmates got into the habit of telling their teacher “I promise I’m smarter than this” when he did the program a few years ago. I’m hoping to minimize those moments as much as possible by jumping on this review now and hopefully getting a majority of it down so I can recall the information when needed.

Hello, World!

Hello everyone! Welcome to my blog, PTA101.

In this blog, I plan on giving you daily updates on some of the cool things I'm learning in my physical therapy assistant classes. On weekends I'll be posting much longer articles with more in-depth discussions into the material -- articles on topics ranging from kinesiology, interventions, medical terminology, etc.

You can also think of this blog as a glance into the life of a typical PTA student. I’ll update each day with a new fact or topic that pertains both to the things we’re learning and to my own personal opinions on such topic(s). I’d like to keep this blog as informative as it is fun.

Each daily update should be about the length of this current post, with longer weekend posts running maybe 2-3 times longer (and involving a lot more text!).

Thanks for stopping by! I'm excited to start this journey, and hopefully you'll enjoy reading about it as much as I enjoy experiencing it!