Week 2

Hello again!

To start, I will include my question I used to guide my second week of research: what role does the surgeon play in the formation of post-operative patients' rehabilitation?

This week was the first week in the new location. While there is still some construction occurring on the second level, the downstairs is completely finished and functional. Unlike what I had previously expected, there is still the same "inside"/"outside" divide between the facilities, with the treatment tables inside and the work-out equipment outside. A new addition is the courts which are used by club teams, but the patients definitely use them for specific exercises such as lunges and running. Here is a (fairly low quality) picture of the new site!

Out of site on the right hand side are where the treatment tables are. Again, this is where patients can receive restorative treatments. One of the most used is the game ready, a sort of localized ice bath, where a control unit and body wrap (either shoulder, knee, or ankle) are used to activate air compression and cooling in order to draw heat away from the injury and stimulate healing. While most of the patients receive some type of ice packs, I did notice that a large number of the Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) repair patients used the game ready instead.

With my second week, I was beginning to understand what was happening at my site more. The physical therapists' shorthand for specific exercises on patient charts were actually interpretable and I felt like I knew my way around both the "inside" and "outside" facilities. Because of this, my new question was slightly more specific. I noticed many of the patients were in PT for hip or knee surgeries, and I began wondering how the surgeon-therapist interaction impacted the therapist-patient one. After seeing some charts for ACL and hip surgery patients, I saw that a few had several extra pages stapled to the back from the surgery office with deadlines and goals to meet post-operation. I also picked up a sheet that had a basic description of post-opertive knee exercises. After seeing these two things I felt pretty accomplished, and a little like this:

While the relationship the surgeon has with the rehabilitation protocol isn't as direct as the physical therapist and techs', there is definitely a large influence on how the therapy should be executed and on what schedule. For knee and hip injuries, this definitely seems to limit the individuation at the expense of time efficiency, but the PTs still have flexibility to add extra work-outs or reparative treatments they believe will benefit the patients most based on their age, mobility, etc.

I'm very excited for the upcoming week and what else I will be able to discover about knee/hip injuries and the therapist-patient relationship!