Clinical hours – 14/04/2021

14/04/2021 – Marjon Clinic – Online and F2F Appointments – 6hrs

During the first hour, I had an appointment with a client. I have never treated this client before, so they were new, I had noticed before that a supervisor had already done the online triage, so this client was coming in today to use the traction bed following on from a bad back. Traction beds are used as a form of decompression therapy that relieves pressure on the spine (Gudavalli et al., 1997). I then began to set up the traction bed prior to the client coming in s I wasn’t wasting any time. As there was nothing for me to do, I sat next to the client whilst the traction bed was working. At the end of the session, I got the client to perform some movements e.g., bear hugs to make sure there no was pain and before the client rushed to their feet.

During the second hour of the session. I typed up the notes from my client before, making sure they make sense and then checking with a supervisor to make sure I have all the important information typed up, just in case someone else took over the client. I also took this time to ask questions and discuss any clinical impressions that I thought the injury could be. After that, the supervisor suggested areas that I could work on, one being confident and believing in myself. 

For the third hour of my clinic session, a regular client came in for their normal treatment but after finding it out they were still in pain, the supervisors and I changed our approach to the client by trying a new treatment to see if this would help relieve the pain and discomfort the client was feeling. After performing a quick massage and MET’s (muscular energy techniques) it was the end of the session. Muscle energy technique achieves pain relief and relaxation in muscles using a specialized structure in the muscles called the Golgi tendon organ (Chaitow et al., 2006). The client had walked out feeling better than they did when they first walked in and they booked again for the following week.

Lunch

This is typically where we take the hour to go and get some lunch, on this particular day I wasn’t feeling too hungry, so I took the time to write the notes from my previous client so when my supervisors were back, they were able to look over my notes and ‘save as final’.

During the fifth hour in clinic, I has seen a new client in clinic, but I knew them from placement due to being their therapist pitch side, so I already had an understanding of the client’s injury due to being at the game where the injury occurred. This client had severe back pain leading on from a game that they played a few days before coming into the clinic. The pain was located in the groin after kicking a ball at the game just a few days before. Due to the client being in so much pain and not being able to complete any movements, it was hard to fully assess, so instead, the client decided to come back in the next week to see if there was any improvement.

During the final hour of the session. I typed up the notes from my client before, making sure they make sense and then checking with a supervisor to make sure I have all the important information typed up, just in case someone else took over the client. I also took this time to ask questions and discuss any clinical impressions that I thought the injury could be. After that, the supervisor suggested areas that I could work on, one being confident and believing in myself.

References:

Gudavalli MR, Cox JM, Baker JA, Cramer G, Patwardhan AG. Intervertebral disc pressure changes during a chiropractic procedure. Adv Bioeng 1997;36:215–6. (level of evidence 3a)

Chaitow L, Crenshaw K. Muscle energy techniques. Elsevier Health Sciences; 2006.