For the full term of the work experience program, I will be working at Response Therapy in Cary. For my first day on the job, I was first given a brief tour of the facility. Dan Cyr, the person I am working for and with, is the owner of Response Therapy and SportHQ which are housed in the same facility. I was shown rooms for both businesses and Dan explained to me that I would be working in the clinic (the physical therapy clinic) with him, Jeffrey, Parker, and occasionally Kim and another intern. I spent most of my time during the day observing Dan and the other therapists at work as I obviously have no training in physical therapy and by no means could diagnose or treat patients. Dan and the other therapists did however take time to introduce me to each patient and explain their case and how they planned to proceed and why. It was interesting to see that there was such a range of patients. We had younger people come in for sports injuries, middle ages people in for either sports related or other injuries, we had quite a few people in for rehab after surgery of some kind, and we even had a lovely elder couple come in together. As the day went on Dan explained that in between patients I could wipe down tables, prepare pillows and while patients were in I could prepare and remove hot and cold packs when necessary. I was also able to use an ultrasound machine on one of the last patients of the day.
Some of the most interesting things I saw during the day were the use of electronic stimulus, the use of electronic stimulus along with dry needling, and the use of an ultrasound machine. Typically, when using electronic stimulus, you’re looking to help muscles fire correctly and in a way basically reteaching the muscle on how to function. This can be done by using an e-stim machine (which they have as a combined e-stim and ultrasound machine) or can be done with dry needling. To my understanding, you want to use electronic stimulus with needling to produce the same firing in muscles, but with dry needling it can also be used to break up knots and thus tightness in muscles. When I saw it in use, the patient was being dry needled in his trapeziuses/trapezii. Two needles are inserted into the muscle being worked on and cables are attached to each end so that electricity can be sent through the muscle between the two needles. You want the voltage to be turned up to a point where there is no pain but you achieve a twitch in the muscle. The electricity helps to effectively break up knots in the muscle thus allowing it to function better. This technique of using electronic stimulus with dry needling rather than just dry needling is much more effective because you can loosen larger areas of muscle with only two needles and a current passing through the muscle between the two points rather than going in with multiple needles for the same large area of focus.
