• In what areas have you experienced the greatest personal and professional learning and

development during this academic year? 

Year 1: I have gained confidence in my knowledge and myself. I believe I have begun to be

more confident in my answers even if it turns out not to be the right answer. I tend to doubt

myself when I hear others discussing a topic that I thought I knew but are describing it

differently. It makes me begin to doubt myself. I had a roundabout journey to get into PT school

but I knew once I was accepted I would do well because I always had. I knew that I wouldn’t be

a perfect A student anymore but I had not realized that I would have to revamp how I studied. I

completed a Master program with a 4.0 and PT school was still a whirl wind to get use to. Prior

to PT school I had never made my own study guides for a test. I feared that I would have

incorrect information or not be able to pull out what the important concepts were. Starting in the

fall of 2021 I began making study guides for test in certain courses that required a lot of

reorganizing of material to have it all in one place. I have a white board calendar at home that I

place all test an assignment on for the month. I wouldn’t say by any means that I was an

unorganized person prior to PT school however, it allowed me to stay on track and determine

when I needed to start studying for upcoming test.

During my first clinical I was able to continue to build confidence in working with

patients, and was able to improve building trust with them quickly. I was able to begin to feel

what some deficits feel like, or see what actual diagnoses look like from a patient experiencing it.

This was a great experience because prior to the clinical when working with my classmates we

had to try to act out an injury but we could not act out different end feels or deficits really well.

Being able to see how patients compensate and how the body actually creates different end feels

was a great leaning experience.

Year 2: In what areas have you experienced the greatest personal and professional learning and

development during this academic year? 

I believe personally I have experienced the most personal growth in my communication

and confidence. I believe my communication with my peers and faculty has improved because, I

believe I can effectively get my questions or concerns out. I also believe that when listening to

my classmates I have become a better active listener when communicating about school or

personal life. I also believe I have grown tremendously in my confidence this past year

personally and professionally. I am a more confident test taker and try really hard to not change

my answers on a test. There were 2 occasions when I did this throughout the past year and I did

in fact have the correct answer before changing them. I had a very rough start to my fall semester

and it really affected me harder than I anticipated. I was able to overcome this hurdle and I

thrived the rest of the semester.

In my professional learning and development, I have also grown in my clinical reasoning

abilities. I believe the practicals throughout our second year of the program really challenge your

clinical reasoning, we had to create full programs for neurological patients with proper dosing,

and ways to progress, and regress the exercises in all categories, and understand why the

exercises were appropriate. We also had to learn a variety of acute care assessments and

treatments and provide rationale for why I choose to complete the exam or treatment that I did.

• How/Why do you feel the materials/artifacts included in your portfolio represent your learning
and development during this year? 

Year 1: I choose to include what I did in my portfolio because I believe it shows the

understanding I have of the material and it also shows how I have grown in this program so far.
My confidence has been a big part of my change in my first year in the program. I am beginning

to feel more confident in the material, or even in providing an answer even if I am unsure if what

I said was correct. I also believe what I included sums up my first year in PT school very well. I

believe my grades represent my experience appropriately, and even though my spring semester

grades were a little different than the previous two, I am still proud of them because they are still

good and the semester was a little more challenging than other and I worked very hard.

Year 2: How/Why do you feel the materials/artifacts included in your portfolio represent your
learning and development during this year? 

I believe the artifacts in my portfolio this year show my improvement in my confidence

because for the three semester that comprise the second year, I only received two B+’s, and did

exceptionally well on my comprehensive neuro practical. I also chose to add my PWR Moves

certification because this was something that I sought out on my own and initiated to better off

treat my future patient’s and assist our community MOVE members more effectively. This year I

am also very proud of my community service log. As volunteer chair of PTSO I believe I

provided ample events for all to pick and choose what they would like to participate in and I

think everyone had a great time with the experiences that they completed.

• What facilitated your learning and development and what constrained it? 

Year 1: I believe working in groups or partners for studying has really helped improve my

learning and confidence in knowledge. I have found who I study well with and I have learned

that I really enjoy working with others when it comes to studying for exams because we can

build off each other’s knowledge to get a full understanding. I also find having the lecture
recordings available is very nice. This is a new concept to me that I have never had available

before. Since I did well in school before I figured I would not need the lectures recorded and

made available to me. However, I would have to say that a hand full of times I have gone back to

a lecture to review a slide or two that was confusing or needed more clarification after reviewing

my notes. I do not believe very much has constrained me and my learning. I would say being in

Houghton instead of Mount Pleasant has been an interesting adjustment. We do have slightly

different equipment than in Mount Pleasant because we do not have the storage space for it I also

wish that I could sometimes ask questions after class to the professors in Mount Pleasant but it is

to challenging via Webex.

Year 2: What facilitated your learning and development and what constrained it? 

I believe working with community partners during PT connect was very helpful. Even

though I did my first clinical in acute care I did not treat many patients with neurological

conditions. To be able to feel and experience working with patients with tone and other deficits

as a result of their injuries helped me appreciate and better understand how to work with

neurological patients. I also thought having MOVE back in person has really helped facilitate my

learning because I have to react on the spot to patient responses and adapt exercises very quickly

for each participant. I also believe that overall, the course material was presented in a way that

made learning the material efficient. I also believe that the faculty understand what the more

foreign concepts are to students and do a great job explaining the material in different ways so

we can grasp the concepts (even when we thought we would not). I think what constrained my

learning is that sometimes I felt as though the faculty teaching courses were not always all on the

same page, or long interruptions occurred during lectures or labs. I also believe that in the fall

semester when I was struggling it took a mental toll on me for a brief time and it took a little to
dig out of that spot and move forward forcing myself to put a bad exam behind me. At the same

time, this was also a great learning experience for me, as I was able to successively put the exam

behind me and push forward. It was always in the back of my mind but I was able to reset.

• What areas do you believe need further development and what are 

your plans for facilitating that development?

Year 1: I believe that I need to continue to work on my confidence in my knowledge. It is

beginning to show with my written exam grades and my practicals. However, I feel in a practical

setting I still get very nervous and feel as though I am providing incorrect information. I know I

am not as nervous because of working hands on with a mock patient because I do believe my

patient interaction skills are in a good place. I do think that it boils down to do I know the

information or not and my head goes to what questions are they going to ask and do I know the

answer. I do know that when I get nervous or don’t know the answer to a question asked right

away that I tend to answer the question in a questioning not so confident answer and I need to

continue to work on this. I also feel as though my critical reasoning skills could use some

improvement and I do know that some of this will come with being more confident. I believe I

can improve this by preparing in advance for courses like mock where we will put our

knowledge for the week to use. I believe that sometimes I have an idea of what a patient

diagnosis maybe, but then I get stuck on where do I go from here, what do I specifically need to

measure (ROM, MMT, MLT…) and what special test need to be performed. I believe working on

my recall of knowledge will also help with this because it is more practice having to come up

with my next steps.

Year 2: What areas do you believe need further development and what are 

your plans for facilitating that development?

I believe I can continue to improve in my clinical reasoning as this is a very patient

dependent and crucial task of a physical therapist. I also believe I could use a refresher on my

ortho skills and tests because I have not viewed/ used many of these skills in over a year. I also

believe that my palpation abilities have improved greatly due to our second manual therapy

class, and working hands on with community partners. However, I feel as though I am not

always confident that I am on the right area or feeling/ identifying problem areas correctly. I

also feel as I can continue to improve my communication skills because this is a lifelong skill

that you must be able to do effectively. Whether it is in one’s professional life, or personally

life, communication is key and everyone communicates differently, therefore understating and

respecting others is very important in any relationship, and I feel as though everyone’s

communication can always improve.