Internship Day 7 - 2/18/25
For the second day of the second week of the internship, I came in at 8:45am which was our first patient of the day. He was a regular patient that would come in most of the days out of the week and already knew what to do when he arrived. Usually Jeremy will have him perform new exercises for him, but for today, he had him do his usual stuff like using the bike, resistance band work, and hip mobility exercises. He seems to be doing better at the exercises every time he comes in but there are other days where he feels some sort of pain or he’s limping. After he left, all of his other morning patients had canceled on him so I didn’t need to be back until 1 in the afternoon. As soon as the afternoon came around, that was when we got busier as patients kept coming in early which was good but made the other patients wait. We had some with all kinds of injuries, one of them came in with vertigo, which was one patient that I could not examine with.
Internship Day 8 - 2/19/25
For the third day of week 2, we had the same patients come in for their usual treatments. There was nothing new that was assigned to them other than performing their regular exercises that they were told to do. Since Jeremy was explaining to me everything that he was doing, I didn’t necessarily have any questions other than if I didn’t understand something I would then ask a question. It wasn’t a very busy day since a lot of patients decided to cancel for whatever reason it was. During that time frame when we weren’t busy, I would talk to Jeremy about what he was doing specifically with his patients and how he builds trust with them when they first come in. An important point that he said was to make sure to ask if they feel comfortable with whatever you’re doing with them. It’s critical to gain their trust so that the patients can work well with you and can cooperate while doing an exercise. I thought that was a really good point to hold on to when I move on to my career in the future.
Internship Day 9 - 2/20/25
For the fourth week of week 2, we had a very busy morning and afternoon and I think it was because all the patients that canceled yesterday came in for today. It was also a busy day because we had 2 patients who were socializing too much rather than actually doing their rehab but I had actually quite enjoyed it. They were talking about friends who they used to know and other very interesting stories that I may have not needed to know but they were much older people. Due to that, patients who came in on time were held back just a bit because of the socialization that was going on. Fortunately, the patients knew what they were doing so Jeremy had me start with them while he finished up with the others which was nice. I think Jeremy had gained some of my trust with the patients so I would just talk to them about their day and how they were doing. I’m pretty good at starting conversations and holding on to one so that was never going to be a problem for me. I feel that they all enjoy having me there and they like talking to me so it just makes me happy. It was a good day at the clinic today and I hope tomorrow will be better.
Internship Day 10 - 2/21/25
For the fifth day of week 2, my day had started at 9:45 in the morning so I had more time to get ready and not wake up so early. Jeremy had gone out of town so I was mostly working with Stephanie Meier who was another physical therapist but has another job at a nursing home. She doesn't really come to Iowa PT that much since her other job takes up most of her time. This was the first time we had met so it was really cool meeting her and I thought she did a really good job handling some of Jeremy’s patients. She was only there during the morning and another physical therapist came in during the afternoon. I don’t think I will see Stephanie again since she focuses more on her nursing home job but it was very nice to meet her and spent a good amount of hours with her.