PT 630: Introduction to Professional Issues

This course will explore foundational understanding of what it means to be a professional in health care. Students will explore social issues such as forces that impact health care, the role of legislative and political bodies vis a vis health care, race and class as they impact health care and health seeking behavior, and the role of professional organizations as they impact the health professional. Students will be exposed to the PT Code of Ethics, and will have opportunities to explore their own development as a professional.

PT 653: Adult Neurologic Rehabilitation Foundations

The foundational neurorehabilitation models of treatment, current theory, and evidence are discussed. Students learn movement analysis and strategies for functional movement training using principles of motor learning.

Prerequisites: Completion of first year of DPT.

PT 648: Physical Therapy Across the Lifespan: Adult Systemic Pathology

Systemic processes affect the entire person as an organism. This course is a discussion and review of disease or alteration of several body systems. Each topic is covered with an overview of the pathology, and the medical management of the condition and how pharmacologic management affects physical therapy interventions. Patient cases are framed in the ICF model and the role of the physical therapist in acute, sub-acute, and chronic phases is investigated.

Prerequisites: Second year status in the Physical Therapy program.

PT 655: Physical Therapy for Adults with Enduring Neurologic Disability

This course teaches health promotion and prevention of secondary impairments in neurologic populations. Using SCI as a model patient for lifelong care, PT students are taught skills that span from acute care to aging with disability. Upper extremity preservation concepts are learned in conjunction with advanced transfer and wheelchair skills to maximize community participation potential. An overview of wheelchair seating and prescription for individuals with neurologic disability, as both health promotion and as intervention, completes the course.

Prerequisites: PT 653 and 654.

PT 677: Advanced Seating and Wheelchair Prescription

Course Description/Overview:
This course will be an advanced synthesis of applied anatomy, neurophysiology of tone management, observational analysis of alignment and observational movement analysis for optimal upper extremity mechanics for wheelchair propulsion.

This course will begin with a review of anatomical interactions for seated postural alignment when there are mechanical limitations to free skeletal movement. We will then move onto the foundation of orthotic seating intervention to minimize postural deviations and abnormal tone responses in the presence of paralysis. Seating interventions will be discussed in this light and students will have the opportunity to work on at least one patient case where the intervention will be adjustment of current equipment following the orthotic paradigm.

Manual wheelchair prescription for maximum functional independence will be the next focus. Dynamic balance characteristics of chair configurations and interfacing wheelchair parameters with functional habits and abilities will be discussed. Upper extremity protection and configuring a wheelchair for optimal push mechanics will be overviewed. Students will have the opportunity to work with at least one patient case and complete a wheelchair prescription and create all supporting documents to facilitate acquisition of the equipment.

This course will consist of lecture and lab components. Labs will incorporate clinical examination of seating and wheelchair prescription clients.

PT 677: Advanced Wheelchair and Transfer Skills

Course Description/Overview
How does an individual actually live a productive life if they use a manual wheelchair full time with no ability to stand or walk? The answer is in mastery of advanced wheelchair skills and transfers. Specifically, managing doors, transferring off the floor, over-height transfers, stowing a wheelchair into a car, wheelies down inclines and off curbs as well as how to independently ascend curbs and descent stairs with a railing.

This course will teach how a therapist teaches these skills. Students will indeed learn to do these skills but most importantly how to teach them.

Course content will include: how to build success and instill confidence in ability, how to break down a complex skill to component parts, how to sequence skill acquisition and movement analysis, this last is key. How does the therapist know what to correct and how to create success from failure? In addition we will learn a system called Goal Attainment Scaling for outcome measures.