Shadowing a Medical Doctor
Here is a photo of me on my first day at HSS. Please excuse my hair—I had a long day of shadowing!
Shadowing Dr. Struan Coleman- These last few weeks I have been shadowing Dr. Struan Coleman at the Hospital for Special Surgery and have had the privilege to watch the patient care of Olympic gold medalists and young collegiate athletes. Shadowing Dr. Coleman has also been super helpful for forming a more constructive program for CitySquash and other SEA programs because I have been able to get a detailed timeline about all the components of a proper injury prevention and rehabilitation program. Here is a photo of me on my first day of shadowing.
Main Takeaways
In conversations with Dr. Coleman, I realized that one of the most important features of a post-injury program is rehabilitation work. I think an example of two patients best demonstrates this. Both patients were of similar ages and had similar levels of activity but the main distinction between their cases was the level of rehabilitation that they had been given. The first patient, who we will call Jane, was consistent, going to strengthen her muscles twice a week and also doing small exercises on the side to strengthen the muscles around their injury. The second patient, who we will call John, only completed a couple of weeks of physical therapy and then didn't stick with his program. The results of these patients were drastically different. Jane's injury had healed within 3 months—an impressive timeline for a major injury—while John's was still troubling him even in the 6th month of his injury. This distinction between the two patients was caused by their approach to rehabilitation, demonstrating that proper rehab is a key proponent of healing an injury.
Rehabilitation
This being said, rehabilitation is expensive and can take up a large amount of time. Especially for a student-athlete, it is sometimes hard to work into your schedule but my hope with the development of this website is that I can provide strengthening exercises that can be done to combat minor injuries and strengthen the muscles around the injury site. Follow along on my site under "Injury Management".
