Practical advice

[jtb93]

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Hello all. I'm seeking advice for a practical I have coming up this Monday. All we know before the practical is that the case will be in the acute care setting with an emphasis on neuro, cardiopulm, and/or integ.

I had the same professor for my neuro and cardiopulm courses. There is so much content that we glazed over in both courses that I have no idea how to even prepare for this practical. The only pathologies we covered in neuro were stroke, SCI, and TBI. There was not even a mention of more prevalent pathologies such as Parkinsons, ALS, MS, etc. These diagnoses were on the syllabus schedule but my professor let us have these days off for self-study. Being a 6 credit course, this equates to 90 hours of class and lab time. I estimate that we only spent around 50 hours in class and lab combined. I understand that in a doctorate level program, we have to take control of our education, but literally no guidance from faculty makes this implausible.

Any advice on how I should prep for Monday? The professor who is in charge of writing the practical cases is pulling potential diagnoses off of the syllabus even though we haven't talked about a majority of them. Discussion with faculty has prompted the program director to investiage this issue, but our pratical is still scheduled for Monday. I know this post may come off as a complaint, but this is a genuine issue that myself along with my 30 other classmates are having. I've put so much work into PT school and I'm done with classwork this coming summer, yet I struggle to see how I'm going to make it past this practical with the little we have done this past semester.

Any advice is appreciated! Thank you in advance!

 

[ptbusiness]

Just review BASIC information on all 6 conditions you mentioned above. All your classmates should be familiar with those conditions about as much/little as you are. Your professor will not fail the entire group just because you were not taught something that was supposed to be taught.
I am not sure how your practicals are designed and graded... But pay attention to safety (like put safety belt on "patient", guard them, frequent breaks, verbal cues, etc).
For MS and ALS in short: exercises should be chosen keeping in mind that the patient will be regressing. So let's say today patient is using a wheelchair for mobility. You do not want to try to train them to walk (because they will probably not able to do that in future), but rather practice transfers chair <-> bed, toilet, etc.
For Parkinsons: focus on large amplitude AROM (big steps, full AROM with arms, if they have hands tremor and have difficulty grabbing objects tell them to open hands wide, etc).