U.S Olympic Traning Center

U.S Olympic Traning Center

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Fun after Work and Intern Olympics!!

To help keep athletes, staff and interns happy who live on complex the U.S.O.C. made a special deal with the Denver Nuggets and get us all half priced tickets as an Olympic Appreciation night. We ended up getting great seats and the athletes even got a private box. At half time we had a promotional movie play and they invited all the athletes down to the court. After the game as another special treat we got to go down to court after it was over and shoot hoops! It was truly a once in a life time opportunity! Other awesome events included coordinating an intern hiking trip to the mountains. We ended up with 6 people and we went to Estes Park to hike/snowshoe in the Rocky Mountain National Park. The trip could not have been more perfect! We had gorgeous weather and did some truly epic hikes to summit a mountain at 10,000 feet above sea level.

As part of our internship the intern class participates in “Intern Olympics”. This activity is held every Monday night where the 4 intern teams complete against each other in Olympic events. The activity is a big event on complex since we actually recruit athletes and coaches to teach us the sport events before we battle it out. The events so far have consisted of Water Polo, a 5K run (placed 8th out of 16) sitting volleyball (2nd) , kickball (1st), Team Handball (1st undefeated) and the making of an NCAA March madness bracket (personally placed last out of 20 haha) The best event so far has been shooting both air rifle and air pistol. I had pulled a few strings with the resident athlete shooters on complex and got some of the shooters to not only give me some pointers but give me a private lesson. The lesson worked and I actually won! There were about 20 of us that participated and I scored a 43/50 on air rifle and 45/50 on pistol! Everyone was so impressed the Paralympics shooting coach approached me after and told me I should pursue my shooting career! I guess coming from Alabama had its advantages. Look out for me in the Olympics- London 2012! The intern Olympics have been so far the best bonding experience with the intern class. Everyone really enjoys participating and the standings so far has my team in 2nd place with 3 points between 1st and 15pts in front of 3rd , unfortunately the 4th place team is behind 100 pts.

More Fun on the Job...

Alright here it is…another summary of fun/interesting days at the job from the past 2 weeks.
One of the most beneficial parts of my job is the time that gets devoted to learning and teaching new rehab techniques. One day in particular, Kerry the PT, went over with myself and the other intern for about 1 ½ hrs common injuries. Within the time we went over shoulder impingement, hip replacement, knee replacement and patellar dislocation. On another day we sat in the rehab gym and brainstormed on creating 4 new exercises for an ACL tear with a gymnast. The athlete is progressing extremely fast with his injury and is getting bored with the exercises. After creating about 4 or 5 drills with a step box, weight ball, ladder and cones I worked with the athlete and implemented the exercises with him. Another teaching day took place when a male figure skater came into the clinic with a fractured 5th metatarsal in his left foot. The wild thing about this particular case is that he was not going to get a soft or hard cast on his foot because in 2 weeks he has to skate in the world championship in Italy. Therefore we only wrapped his foot in tape and whenever he wasn’t practicing and skating he was in the clinic doing ice baths to manage swelling and pain. However, about 2 days before leaving for Italy, he retuned to get a soft cast for support. After making the cast he wanted a little room to bend easier so we had to get out the saw and literally saw some of the cast off. Jenna the ATC was about to make her first cut when he screamed on the exam table! Jenna and myself included jumped and might have screamed ourselves thinking she had cut his foot. Of course he is a big jokester and was kidding. However, Jenna did not think the joke was funny. Other learning opportunities arose when working with Joe, a wrestler who is recovering from ACL surgery. He is progressing quickly and to make sure his rehab doesn’t get boring myself and his trainer did some brainstorming for new activities. To start Joe off we decided to so stool scoots. To make the activity even more fun we made Shayla race with him around the clinic. The object of the exercise is you sit on a doctor’s stool and use your heels to move and go around the clinic. The task seems easy but actually is extremely difficult for the length in which the course is set. The race was a much needed change in his rehab and everyone in the clinic had a good laugh watching them race!

Besides another teaching day, we received rehab equipment in the mail from an inventor. We tried to figure out how the contraption worked but almost ended of breaking it! The equipment obviously was not going to make it into the gym. The last random duty of the week was to run an errand and pick up some medical supplies for the physician exam room. I was pretty excited about the trip because I was going to be able to drive around the 2010 USA Tahoe. I definitely felt cool driving around town in the Tahoe until I had to go inside Walgreens and purchase 15 Urinary Tract infection tests. Let’s just say it was a really embarrassing moment.

I Love My Job....

So far my internship has reached the two month mark and I couldn’t be happier. I can honestly say it has been one of the best experiences of my life. I not only love my job but all the people I have met thus far. The staff here at the clinic and throughout the complex is some of the nicest people I have ever met. I have even befriended a handful of athletes who I not only eat with but hangout with on and off complex.

The past few weeks have been busy. As an intern in the clinic I was required to meet three goals of my choice while completing my internship and have been working to complete them. Thus far, I have completed my first goal of learning about each rehab modality and actually learning how to use them with athletes. After learning about what each modality does and what injuries require what specific modality, I was ready to use my new skills. In no time at all I got my first recurring patient; a wrestler who has acute pain in his right shoulder located in the AC joint. So far I have done laser treatments on his shoulder 4 times over the past two weeks. Besides laser treatment, I have administered electric stem, set up athletes on the “Game Ready” and “Normatec Pro” systems. I also learned about the diagnostic ultrasound machine and Joe an ATC did a demonstration on Shayla’s (the other clinic intern) ankle to show how the machine works. The day before, Shayla had fell and hurt her ankle so we actually could see the images of her tendon sprain. Besides the smaller modalities, I have learned all about our x-ray system. The x-ray we have here in the clinic was donated to us by Kodak and is priced at 500,000 dollars. As a small project, I was to type out all the radiologist notes from all the x-rays from the past two months and put them in each athletes file. The project took almost all day since there were about 45 x-rays to print. While typing each report, Dustin told to me to write down the interesting ones and he would show me the actual x-rays. I wrote down about 10 of the most interesting and for about 30 minutes we had “x-ray class” and he taught me all about x-ray and how to read the x-ray images.

With my knowledge and time here extending, the staff has felt confident to allow me more responsibilities within the clinic. One of the major assignments was to work with Dr. Moreau the clinic manger and begin assisting him with treatments of patients from beginning to end. The first athlete I worked with was a figure skater who came into the clinic extremely sick. I began the initial evaluation and Dr. Moreau even had me diagnose the symptoms. This particular case was quite interesting since I had to accompany the patient to the restroom about 6 times within the evaluation because she kept getting sick. Eventually we were unable to handle the seriousness of the issue and actually sent the patient to the emergency room to control her nausea. To complete the treatment I had to do a follow up the next day and turns out she was diagnosed with food poisoning. Other huge projects included the task the calling every single NBG or National governing body of each sport which is about 40 or so and locate their updated accident/injury insurance policy. The task at first was pretty daunting since we were not even given names or numbers to contact. We began the project by surfing the internet finding national team office numbers. After we got a phone number we took turns calling sports looking for the needed documents. The responses have definitely been interesting to say the least. When we would call the offices, they would either have no idea what I was even asking for or they could send the document almost immediately. The project has now taken over two weeks to complete but within the next few days all sports should have all the documents submitted.
Along with duties as the sports med intern I also work in the recovery center. Sarah, the full time employee, was taking a vacation from Thursday to Sunday so the recovery center was left in my complete care. Working in the recovery center for the full day meant I had to work the 12-8 shift with no dinner break! The recovery center is always fun cause not only is it a change in scenery but its fun to socialize with athletes and talk about their training, where they keep their Olympic medals and what they do for fun. They are always interested about what interns do and especially what Alabama is like because I guess we have a lot of stereotypes and they like the southern accent when I talk. While working, I did all the random chores of laundry, filling shampoo bottles in the locker room, cleaning the flip flops they wear, stocking the drinks and snacks and scheduling all the athletes for their weekly massages.