Healthcare Professions Overview Quiz

Physical Therapists

• Teach patients to prevent or manage conditions for long-term health benefits.
• Assess individuals and create treatment plans to improve movement, reduce pain, restore function, and prevent disability.
• Work with patients to prevent mobility loss through fitness and wellness programs for healthier lifestyles.

Therapeutic Recreation Therapists

• Provide treatments to restore, remediate, and rehabilitate function and independence in daily life activities.
• Foster health and wellness and reduce activity limitations due to illness or disability.
• Focus on play and leisure as therapeutic approaches, sometimes integrating into community recreation.

Occupational Therapists

• Help people of all ages participate in desired activities through the therapeutic use of everyday tasks (occupations).
• Support function across all environments (home, work, school, community) addressing daily living activities (ADLs) alongside physical, psychological, and cognitive well-being through occupational engagement.

Athletic Trainers

• Focus on prevention, clinical evaluation and diagnosis, immediate and emergency care, treatment, and rehabilitation.
• Support for organization and professional health and well-being.

Personal Trainers

• Possess knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary for creating safe and effective fitness programs to help people achieve health and fitness goals.
• Reputable certifications, such as NSCA, NASM, ACSM, CSCC, and NCSA, validate the credentials.

Therapeutic Exercise

• Human movement is the primary focus for universal identification within the physical therapy profession.
• The vision statement clearly emphasizes the role of physical therapy in human movement.
• All therapeutic exercise programs, education, and research should center on the human movement system.

Human Movement System

• The human movement system is composed of interconnected systems (endocrine, nervous, musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, integumentary, and pulmonary).

Impact of Physical Function

• Physical function involves several interconnected areas of movement; balance/posture/equilibrium, stability, muscle performance, cardiopulmonary endurance, neuromuscular control/coordination, mobility/flexibility.

Balance

• Aligning body segments against gravity.
• Maintaining or moving the body within available support without falling.
• Sensory and motor system interaction for equilibrium.
• Static balance maintains alignment against gravity.
• Dynamic balance supports movement within support base without falling.

Cardiopulmonary Endurance

• Performing moderate-intensity, repetitive total body movement over an extended duration.
• Synonyms include cardiopulmonary fitness.
• Examples include walking, jogging, cycling, swimming, etc.

Coordination and Neuromuscular Control

• Accurate timing and sequencing in muscle firing (intensity).
• Effectiveness in initiation, guiding, and grading of movement.
• Basis of smooth, efficient, and accurate movement.
• Happens either consciously or automatically.
• Interaction of sensory and motor systems facilitates synergistic, agonist, antagonist, and stabilizer functions to anticipate, respond to proprioceptive inputs.

Flexibility and Mobility

• Ability to move freely without restriction.
• Interchangeably used with mobility.
• Ability of structures/segments to move; needed for functional ROM.
• Passive mobility is dependent on soft tissue (contractile/noncontractile) extensibility.
• Active mobility requires neuromuscular activation.

Muscle Performance

• Capacity of muscle to produce tension for physical work.
• Encompasses strength, power, and muscular endurance.

Stability

• Ability of the neuromuscular system through synergistic muscle actions to maintain a stationary position or control base during superimposed movement.
• Maintaining alignment of bony partners by means of passive and dynamic components.

Impact on Physical Function

• Systematic, planned physical movements.
• Purpose is remediation and prevention of body function/structural impairments.
• Improving, restoring, and enhancing activities, participation.
• Reducing health-related risk factors and maximizing overall health, fitness, and well-being.

Types of Therapeutic Interventions

• Interventions address impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions identified during the patient examination.
• Various techniques and activities are used.
• Examples include posture awareness, relaxation exercises, and breathing/ventilatory muscle training exercises.

Patient Safety

• Assess health history, current status, and medical clearance.
• Evaluate medications.
• Assess balance and coordination.
• Consider environmental factors, space, support surfaces, postures, exercise performance, and fatigue.
• Minimize injury risk.

Health Status, Functioning, and Disability

• Knowledge of health status, function, and disability is fundamental for effective healthcare services.
• Factors influencing healthcare include access to quality care, condition severity/duration, patient motivation/attitude, and family/social support.

International Classification of Functioning (ICF)

• Defines both functioning and disability as interactive processes.
• Individuals interact with their conditions and environmental factors.
• This influence shapes their lives and participation in society.
• World Health Organization has a companion classification system, ICD, which classifies health conditions (diseases, disorders, and injuries).

ICF—Components

• Describes the relationship among health conditions, body functions/structures, activities, participation, contextual factors, and specific examples.
• ICF is used to understand individual needs, body structure and function, and to explain using this model.

International Classification of Functioning (ICF)—Impairments

• Problems with body physiology and function (including psychological function).
• Problems with anatomical structures.
• Difficulties with executing actions, tasks, and activities.
• Difficulties participating in life situations (self-care, household responsibilities, work, community involvement, recreation/socialization).

International Classification of Functioning (ICF)—Types of Impairment

• Primary impairments directly result from the health condition.
• Secondary impairments might result from pre-existing conditions or related faulty mechanics.

International Classification of Functioning (ICF)—Contextual Factors

• Complete background of an individual's life and living situation.
• Environmental factors—physical, social, and attitudinal influences.
• Facilitating factors that support functioning or barriers that contribute to disability.
• Personal factors—individual attributes.
• Non-health aspects including age, gender, lifestyle, culture, education, etc.

Example of ICF at work

• Example of ICF application.

Principles of Comprehensive Patient Management

• Coordination, communication, and documentation are crucial throughout the entire patient management.
• Encompasses various tasks, like creating reports, evaluating and planning care, implementing programs, communicating with stakeholders, and participating in team conferences.

Clinical Decision-Making

• Involves judgments and determinations focusing on patient care, including intervention selection/implementation/modification, coordination, communication, documentation, and clinical prediction rules.
• Rules use history, physical examination, and tests to aid in diagnosis and identify subgroups needing specific treatment.

Evidence-Based Practice

• Integrating research findings and expertise with patient values, goals, and circumstances.
• Steps include identifying the problem, research, critically analyzing the evidence, comparing interventions, incorporating findings into decisions, and assessing outcomes (pain reduction, improved quality of life).
• Example of PICO design format.

Patient Management Model

• Examination including health history, specific tests, and measures.
• Evaluation to understand findings.
• Diagnosis of conditions and categories.
• Classification using standardized systems.

Prognosis and Plan of Care

• Establishing goals and outcomes using a plan of care.
• Detailed description of care to address the patient's unique needs.
• Identifying functional outcomes, measurement tools, and patient satisfaction, alongside discharge plans.

Strategies for Effective Exercise Intervention and Patient Instruction

• Determining goals/approaches related to exercise prescription.
• Managing variables such as intensity, volume, frequency, duration, load, and tolerance.
• Introduction of Physical Stress Theory.
• Progression of exercise (e.g., Crawl-Walk-Run).
• Strategies for adherence, including patient belief in exercise value, avoidance of discomfort, frequency of activity, and literacy/program related issues.

Strategies for Effective Exercise (Motor Learning)

• Concepts of motor learning (internal processes related to practice and acquisition).
• Motor tasks in different settings—discrete, serial, and continuous.
• Motor performance (ability to execute skill).
• Strategies for learner enhancement.

Strategies for Effective Exercise (Closed vs. Open Environments)

• Environmental factors and their influence on tasks (fixed/moving surfaces, objects and people.)
• Distinctions between closed (e.g., distal fixation tasks like squats), open (unstable environments such as moving objects/people) task characteristics.

Stages of Motor Learning

• Stages of cognitive, associative, and autonomous motor learning to understand how tasks are initially developed, refined, and eventually become automatic.

Strategies for Effective Exercise—Motor Learning Considerations

• Variables influencing motor learning: pre-practice considerations, attention to task, demonstration, practice type and variability, and feedback.