Almost Productive
Today was clinical, once again. I’m really growing fond of Thursdays and starting to look forward to next semester when I’m in clinical 2 days per week instead of one. I’m still stuck at 2 of the 4 master comps I need for this semester, but I’m on the edge of a couple comps. I have all the pre-comps completed for the KUB, Portable Chest, and Pediatric Upper Extremity. I am struggling with portable exams right now. I may need to ask one of the techs to spend a little extra time with me on those. I have made a couple attempts at comping the portable chest and haven’t gotten an image that I’m totally satisfied with to turn in for a master competency. These portable exams are difficult. I’m still making progress though. I’m getting a few pre-comps here and there, so the comps will start to come more quickly. I really wish I could start pre-comping my lower extremity exams, but we won’t test off in lab on those until December unfortunately. I have done a lot of foot, ankle, and knee exams, and I’m quite comfortable with those, but I can’t count them as pre-comps yet. I suspect that I’ll be rotating to an ortho office in January, so I should get a ton of opportunities to comp upper and lower extremities, as well as the spinal exams. We start learning the spinal stuff at the beginning of January, and those exams are very common everywhere I go.
I did a foot and ankle exam on a patient today who was complaining about pain in her foot, and her ankle was visibly swollen, but not extremely swollen. When I looked at the radiographs, I immediately noticed a bone spur that was hook-shaped and approximately 1.5cm long, with the hook pointing toward the toes. I don’t know if that was the cause of her problems, but it certainly didn’t look comfortable.
I’m glad I get to sleep in tomorrow…
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