DPT Portfolios

• Professional Goal Statement:

My professional goals include developing my physical therapy evidence based practice skills, to be up-to-date with the current physical therapy techniques/ skills/ literature,  to provide the most effective and efficient care to my patients. Related goals include, improving with differential diagnosis,  achieving ABPTS certification in chosen PT fields, and transitioning to outpatient physical therapy setting from acute / skilled nursing facility (SNF) settings (to encounter patient population in areas of interest).

• Career Plan:

I am a constant learner and a knowledge seeker, by nature. t-DPT is only a step, though an important step, in the enormous amount of professional education that I still seek. The following table provides a layout of the amount of education that I have gained for professional development, with a brief mention regarding my ideas for future professional development.

I do plan to change my work settings, which have been in recent times restricted to SNF/ acute/ long term acute. I had a brief sojourn in outpatient clinical services, but due to various circumstances in life, have not been able to pursue that clinical setting. By changing to outpatient setting, I hope to encounter patients more of orthopedic and neurologic diagnosis , and patients of varying age groups.

I also have developed an interest in geriatrics by having worked in settings that has as its major patient population, the older adults. I plan to first appear for ABPTS Geriatrics certification. I want to follow this up with a transition to an outpatient clinical setting, where after few years of clinical practice, depending upon the then area of clinical interest, I want to appear for another specialty certification (Orthopedics/ Neurology).

• Objectives:

The following were the objectives that I had developed at the beginning of the t-DPT program.

• To be more adept with using research and evidence based literature as part of daily treatment for my patients.
• To be educated and trained on how to educate aspiring therapists, with being part of an education institution.
• To improve with differential diagnosis.
• To gain t-DPT degree to be in sync with APTA’s vision 2020 for physical therapists.

• Course Product examples:

It was good to get exposed to an amalgamation of courses that provided a good refresher of all the PT subject matters/concepts.  I chose purposefully the less known topics to me in all my courses, to get the most out of the course. I really enjoyed reading materials about different pathological conditions in Advance Patient Management I and II (PHYT 820 and 822). I specifically enjoyed the stroke module in PHYT 822 and would like to share here the exercise intervention for stroke patient (case study) that I had developed as part of the coursework for this module. I also had interesting learning experiences through the various research articles provided in PHYT 875 (Advanced Orthopedic Assessment and Treatment) and PHYT 885 (Advanced Neuromuscular Elective).

Despite this program being a distance learning program, two courses that provided the most practical experience, were PHYT 800 (Seminar –Education in Physical therapy) and PHYT 839 (Advance Practice Issues). It was very interesting for me to teach my fellow DPT students in PHYT 800, who were in the first semester of their third year. I had entwined my topic of reimbursement and restraint issues in SNF with the existing topics of Jane Deloach., PT, DPT, GCS, CEAA. I would like to share here the PowerPoint that I had developed for the reimbursement issues and the case study that I developed for assisting in teaching restraints to the students.

• Capstone Project:

My Capstone project was an attempt, on my part, to give back to the community. I wanted to develop a program to help prevent/ decrease musculoskeletal complaints from prolonged computer work. I had perused 12 websites and 39 research articles (RCTs, systematic reviews and meta-analyses) for this purpose. I had provided a one and half hour presentation with a practical demonstration of the evidence based exercises to the participants. Please visit my capstone website at https://dptcapstone.web.unc.edu/?p=4754  for further details about my capstone project and its evaluation.

•  Reflection:

• Yes, these have not been two easy years and there were many-a-times, when I had found the juggling of work, family and school commitments, quite overwhelming. Despite and possibly due to, all of the stress, sleepless nights and pressure that I had endured, I have gained awareness about many PT resources and have learned many new PT concepts that I had not known before, during this t-DPT journey. Moreover, with T-DPT, I have developed a better clarity of thought related to my future professional goals and objectives
• I did meet all of my previously created objectives. I have improved with evidence based practice. Before t-DPT, I used to struggle to complete reading even one article in a day. But, now I have reached a level of mastery, where the reading of articles seems to be one of the easier things in life. Further, I am getting better with integrating evidence with daily clinical practice. In addition, I have greatly improved with differential diagnosis and was even able to teach DPT students as part of an education institution.
• Despite having thoroughly enjoyed the course PHYT 800, I do not intend to pursue teaching PT/PTAs immediately in life. Personally, I believe that I still have a lot to learn and would like to explore teaching as an option in future.
• I would like to thank all my teachers in TDPT and a special thanks to Mike Gross and Karen McCulloch, for their immense support and excellent advice.
• It was also great to know my fellow TDPT students – Chris, Annette, and Dee. Thanks for responding in times of stress, to console and motivate that we were all in the same boat and we were going to make it through.
• Last but not the least, words are not enough to convey thanks to my dear husband, Venkat, and my parents for their immense co-operation and faith in me. And, for being there for me, always, in times of need.

(Matanuska Glacier, Alaska, 2014)

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