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McCarty Center Physical Therapists Add Another
Level of Teaching to their Resume
Physical
therapists at the J. D. McCarty Center for children
with developmental disabilities in Norman are
very familiar with teaching. They teach patients
how to strengthen their bodies' everyday. They
teach parents how to continue the patient's
exercise program once they go home. And they
teach students who are doing their pediatric
clinical rotations at the McCarty Center.
Recently the McCarty Center
physical therapy staff, lead by Sue O'Hare,
director of physical therapy, added another
level of teaching to their resume. The McCarty
Center physical therapy staff taught the pediatrics
section for physical therapy assistant (PTA)
students from the Caddo/Kiowa Technology Center
in Ft. Cobb, Oklahoma. The Caddo/Kiowa Technology
Center is the host facility for students who
will receive their PTA associates degree from
Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford,
Oklahoma, or from Sayre Junior College in Sayre,
Oklahoma.
"Teaching PTA students
as a part of their course work is very different
than teaching students who are here for a pediatrics
rotation," said O'Hare. "Teaching
students in a clinical rotation is very situational
with lots of opportunities for demonstration.
Teaching course work means following a syllabus
and preparing lectures. This was our first exposure
to formal teaching and my staff embraced it."
The pediatric section
taught by the McCarty Center PT staff not only
covered the topics that would be covered in
the students' national exam for licensure, but
also covered several topics that the staff felt
the students should be exposed to before going
into the work place. Those topics included:
the federal Individual with Disabilities Education
Improvement Act (IDEA) for the school environment,
assisstive technology - why equipment is made
the way it is and how it functions, treatment
theories and the importance of evidence based
practice.
"Evidence based practice
is the driving force in physical therapy today,"
explained O'Hare. "We're doing physical
therapy based on scientific and medical need
and not just because it looks good. Physical
therapy is becoming more and more research based,
proving that our interventions work."
There were twelve PTA
students here from the Caddo/Kiowa Technology
Center program. They are nearing the end of
their course work and will soon begin their
clinical rotations. The feed back from the students
and their instructor Brent Grimes, PTA, was
positive.
"My students enjoyed
the lectures and PowerPoint presentations,"
said Grimes, "but what they really liked
was being able to hear the lectures and then
see real examples using real patients. It really
closed the loop for them."
One of the live demonstrations,
set up by physical therapist Amy Morris, showed
the students the typical progression of development
of gross motor skills in children. Morris had
five McCarty Center staff children on hand ranging
in ages from 10 weeks to 21 months old. Starting
with the youngest and moving to the oldest,
Morris demonstrated the differences in their
progression based on what each child could do
in various positions…lying on their stomachs,
sitting up, lying on their backs and standing.
Another way of closing
the loop for the PTA students was by showing
them patients with different neurological impairments
of cerebral palsy. "It's one thing for
a student to learn the definitions of these
different impairments of cerebral palsy, but
it's another thing to be able to visually recognize
the difference," explained O'Hare. "This
is important because we treat each of them differently."
According to Grimes, he
will be bringing his next class of PTA students
back to the McCarty Center for their pediatric
section class work, and according to O'Hare,
the McCarty Center PT staff looks forward to
sharing their pediatric expertise with the next
class.
The J. D. McCarty
Center is Oklahoma's center of excellence in
the care and treatment of children with developmental
disabilities from birth to 21. Founded in 1946,
the McCarty Center only treated one diagnosis…cerebral
palsy. Today, the McCarty Center has treated
more than 70 different diagnoses in the developmental
disability category. The McCarty Center's current
inpatient census indicates that the average
age of its inpatients is 9 years old with its
youngest patient being 3 months old and its
oldest being 19 years old.
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