6 January 2011

3:30-5:30pm   2 hours

Accumulated Hours: 81

    Today Nicole gave me her college textbooks to look through during the two hours I was there. They include many diagrams of the hand, wrist, and arm in order to provide the student with a visual of what is being worked on from the inside. I find the structure of the tendons most interesting probably because that is what was worked on within my own hands. Its interesting to see how the tendons, muscles, and other parts of the hand are all connected and work together so that if one strains the tendon, indirectly everything else is also affected and needs to be strengthened and worked on. It goes to prove that when a scar is created during surgery, the tendon is affected in how it gets caught up in scar tissue which connects to the wrist and muscle so it creates not only immobility in the finger of that tendon but also in the wrist itself. These things are important to remember when assessing a case as patients need exercises that cover all areas. For example, all three CHT's give out exercise sheets for finger movement including the straight open hand, to the bent hook in the middle joints, to a fist to open table top fingers. When this sheet is given out to stretch fingers, an exercise to bend the wrist forward and back is also given out. Also when any exercise is applied form is always very important since everything is essentially connected. Nicole, Anne, and Tracy all make sure that their patients are holding their wrists in the right place when doing finger exercises in order to ensure correct stretching and form.