Twelfth Week: Team Work

The kidney filters your blood volume ~30 times every day - that's around 180 litres!

"Think of a hypotonic solution like soup...  but you take out all the salt - which pretty much leaves you with just water..." - A part explanation of the leaky-epithelia working to re-uptake water within the kidney (n.b. urine is not soup!)

Team work was the key to our PHTY254 group presentations on Tuesday. Each group had slightly different aspects of their condition to address, but the idea was to give a 15min presentation on our designated condition / case study. My group was given 'obesity and the metabolic syndrome'. We made the presentation exciting by pretending one member of the group was the client in the case study. I ended up with a pillow under my shirt and a class mate on my back as I preformed part of the Harvard Step Test. In total I was shifting a mass over 140kg to help the class visualise some of the limitations of an obese individual. Other groups presented on osteoporosis, myocardial infarction, multiple sclerosis and diabetes. Recent PHTY254 lectures covered chest physiotherapy, that is; spirometry, reading chest x-rays, reading ECG and chest auscultation (listening to internal chest sounds). We'll get to practice all of these in the labs before the semester break. This week it was just spirometry, percussion (as an assessment technique, rather than a treatment technique), measuring chest expansion (with our hands as well as a measuring tape) and vital signs.

Last week I mentioned that my placement group worked as a team to complete a subjective assessment - this week was no different. Our clinical supervisor is great! If we complete a detailed subjective assessment, she allows us to proceed with an objective assessment and create a treatment plan (all with the patients permission of course) - we are only limited by how efficient and effective we are at the assessment process. Physiotherapists are like investigative journalists or criminal detectives in the way that our subjective assessment works to reveal the specific problem within the context of general health and psychosocial factors. The pathology is usually like a stereotypical criminal; sneaky, deceptive, causes mischief and more often than not needs to be rehabilitated before being allowed to reintegrate back into society. Anyway, we had our notebooks out taking a group subjective again. This week I was given the social history and I done a brilliant job! Only one more week at the Outpatient Clinic to go! Where has the time gone?!

There is a written component to placements. We are expected to complete a SWOT analysis, clinical diary and self-reflection form. SWOT is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. One of these is completed before and after a clinical placement. This encourages us to be self-aware of the above points and plan to minimise weaknesses and overcome threats. Clinical diaries allow us to record conditions we've observed or treated and self-reflection forms allow us to reflect on the experience - these are completed after each day of placement. In addition, the supervisor may ask us to re-familiarise ourselves with content or to research a condition or technique.

I haven't mentioned sport medicing in a while, but this week was particularly exciting (but not because it fits perfectly with the theme 'team work'); the team travelled to Alexandra (2.5h drive from Dunedin) for a match against the Queenstown team! Road trips are always exciting and Alexandra is in a beautiful part of Central Otago, New Zealand! Tech won 9 - 0!!