Week 7

Hello everyone,

This week I’d like to talk more about my experiences and my role at Synergy. I started out the project carrying around my notebook and watching the physical therapists. Now I have learned enough that Vincent sometimes lets me plan and handle a patient’s visit from beginning to end, with his supervision of course.

I have been there long enough to see the progress in many patients. I have gained a lot of their trust and respect by relaying what I learned from Vincent and using that information on them. A lot of patients need similar exercises for similar injuries. Now that I know the common compensation methods and minor flaws in technique that most patients need corrected, I can coach them through the exercises. I have learned how to adapt specific activities for a variety of physical abilities. The patients listen to my advice and Vincent always checks in to make sure I am coaching them correctly.

When Vincent’s hands are tied, he lets me call in patients to the studio and get them warmed up while evaluating them for the day. I have to record their self-assessed pain and fatigue levels. If a patient is fatigued in the muscles we wanted to work on, then we will just take that as good news and continue with the same therapy. If they report pain we may decide to slow it down. Also, we will first manually stretch them and remove tension in their tissues to loosen their muscles for activity. He will sometimes let me do both. Then we will supervise the rebuilding of that muscle, making sure that it strengthens in the right areas and doesn’t scar in the wrong ones.

Now that I know Vincent’s goals for the patients I see, he allows me to choose the exercises for them. I learned all the purposes different exercises have. For example, if we wished to treat a patient with poor glute activation, we would have them perform single leg stands while reminding them to squeeze the glutes. If a patient had tendinitis in their elbow from not using the flexor muscles in their forearm and instead using the tendons, then we would have to build strength in the forearm muscles with exercises involving the movement of the hand while inside a rice bucket (the rice adds resistance to the motions). After the patient’s visit is over, I have to record what exercises they performed for insurance purposes and for further reference. It requires deciphering whether what the patient did was done manually by the therapist, was a therapeutic activity, therapeutic exercise, or involved neuromuscular regeneration. Recently, I have begun learning how to document this information in the actual format insurance companies use.