The Guest Speakers: PT & OT

Last week we had the opportunity to listen to two amazing guest speakers. Ali Thompson and Brian Mills were the two speakers. Ali Thompson went to KU and majored in spanish and minored in kinesiology. Ali Thompson is a sports medicine physical therapist and she taught us so much about schooling and what you do as a PT. The best part about her talk was the interactiveness about her talk. Ali talked about the 3 main types of physical therapists like home care which is the least popular, inpatient, and outpatient. There also some other ones like School setting ot pediatrics. She had us do a bunch of functional tests to test our ankle and knee stability. She made us understand the importance of strength testing in the safety of the athlete. She had great points about strength with just body weight and how that is the best way to test for full healing. They need to do all of their PT exercises and stretches to improve ROM and strength.

Brian Mills was an Occupational Therapist who deals with more of the basic life movements and movements related to their work. He graduated from Missouri Western State and Masters at Rockhurst and a Bachelors in Psychology. He does work that helps people get back to daily life and work after a severe injury. His main points were the modalities he uses to help heal patients. Some of them were more complicated than others like Phonophoresis and Iontophoresis. Some other simpler treatments would be cryotherapy or just cold therapy and heat. He explained how all of these different modalities can help heal his patients and facilitate in the healing process. He works with so many different types of injuries but all of the different modalities help with dealing with all the variety of injury. Both Ali and Brian had good advice for us like keeping relationships and how valuable that is, as well as how important it is to set yourself apart in college to make it easier to get into PT/OT school.