More than you probably ever wanted to know about my classes this semester

Let me just preface this by saying, I started drafting this post during the weekend after our first full week of classes.  We are now about to complete our third full week.  All that to say, things have been pretty busy.  There’s lots that’s been happening that I really want to post about, but time is at a premium right now, and there’s not a whole lot of it to be had.  But hopefully this (very long) post is a good baseline to put everything else that I’ll mention in subsequent posts in context.

Over the summer, when I’d tell people my plans to return to grad school and pursue a DPT, often they’d inquire about what that would entail and what kinds of classes I would be taking.  In response, I’d basically say that it was a three year program, then mumble something about anatomy and kind of shrug my shoulders.  Two months ago, I didn’t really know what I was getting into or what to expect from PT school.  Now that I’ve been through a full week three weeks of classes, I feel that I have a much better handle on the classes that I will be taking this semester and what it all kind of entails.  So here we go, this is what I’m assuming will be a fairly lengthy post talking to the coursework I will be completing this semester.  If you’re curious about what I’ve been up to the past couple weeks and why I have seemingly fallen off the face of the earth, read on.

Before I go into detail about my courses, I should probably explain a few things about my program.  It’s a three year program: two years of mostly coursework and a third year of 3 12-week clinicals.  The program is modeled on Team Based Learning (TBL).  The main idea behind team based learning is that we have a permanent, assigned group of students that we consistently work with to enhance our learning.  Our class is divided into 12 teams with 5-6 people on each team.  These teams are permanent, and we will work together during our two years of didactic coursework.  In most of our classes, we sit together.  One of the classrooms is set up so that each team has an assigned table.  In other classrooms and lecture halls we just sit near one another, but there’s flexibility in that.  (in case anyone was curious or cared, I’m on team 5.)

We have things called Readiness Assessments (RA) that we take occasionally in almost every class.  Basically they are quizzes that are announced ahead of time, so we’re able to prepare, and they cover material we were assigned to learn through readings and recorded video lectures prior to class.  We take each RA twice, first individually (iRA) and then immediately we take it again in our teams as a group (gRA).  The two scores combine for a 60/40 impact on our grade respectively.  The same goes for our exams, though we have yet to complete our first exam.  We do group work all the time, but we also occasionally do things called Team Applications (TA).  These are basically a closed-note assignment that we complete as a team  during class time to apply the information we’ve covered.  So that’s the gist of TBL.

We’re taking six classes this semester.  This was not my choice, that’s just the way the program is designed. I didn’t even register myself for classes, the powers that be took care of all that for me.  So, six classes, and I don’t even know the technicalities of how many credit hours that comes to.  I could look it up, but I don’t know that it makes that big of difference.  I’ll go into some detail about each one, but officially their titles are:

PT 601: Clinical STEPs
PT 602: Brain and Body I
PT 603: Applied Physiology I
PT 604: Movement Sciences I
PT 605: Professional Development
PT 606: Health Promotion Across the Lifespan

In my mind, I kind of lump them into two groups; content heavy, and content less-heavy.  I’ll start with the content less-heavy group, PT 601, PT 605, and PT 606 (which from here on out I will refer to as STEPs, Professional Development, and Health Promotion or just 606)

STEPs stands for “Student Team Experience in Practice.” This class does not meet every week.  STEPs is a course that we will have every semester for the first two years of our program, and it is our clinical experience.  As the name suggests, we complete STEPs in teams, but these teams are different from our everyday TBL teams.  We will stay in this team for both years.  For a week in November, we will not be in class, but I will go to a clinical setting every day to work with a clinical instructor.  We just got our team’s location assigned for our first year of STEPs.  My team will be at an outpatient neuro facility.  We will return to this same facility in the the spring and summer semesters as well.  Then in our second year, each STEPs team will attend a new location.

Professional Development is another class that does not meet every week.  This class provides opportunities for us to learn about physical therapy as a profession, our governing body the APTA, and our role as professionals.  There are some various readings and assignments associated with this class.

The concept of our health promotion class is very interesting.  For the first five weeks, we meet once a week for 4 hours with all the first year PT, PA, and medical students (and a few nursing students) for an interdisciplinary session over at the medical school.  There are lecturers from all three programs as well as guest lecturers.  We usually have online modules and quizzes that we must complete prior to class.  After the first five weeks, the class will sporadically continue to meet, but we will meet as just a DPT class.

So those are the three “odd ball out,” content less-heavy classes.  The other three content heavy courses are PT 602, PT 603, an PT 604.  From here on out I’ll refer to them as Brain and Body, Applied Phys, and MoveSci.

MoveSci deals with a lot of biomechanics.  This is the class where I definitely draw on things that I learned in engineering the most.  We do some  straightforward statics problems where we have to sum forces and moments, we look at stress strain curves, tension/compression/torsion, etc.  This class only meets once a week for two hours, so during class time we’ll work through problem sets and do some team application work.  In order to have time to do that in class, we have to read the textbook and watch the lectures online beforehand.  Usually each week there will be a couple hours of lecture to watch and then an online quiz we have to complete before we go to class.

Applied Phys is another interesting course.  It’s a combination of just standard physiology and a lot of exercise science.  Our professor for this class is from England and has a fantastic accent.  Lectures occur in class, but there’s always assigned reading beforehand.  This is the class where we do some fun things like learn how to take a blood pressure, determine body composition, and find our VO2max.

Well I went ahead and saved the best for last.  Brain and Body.  This class is a doozy.  It’s appropriately titled brain and body because it kind of just covers everything.  This class is not really one class, but like 6 classes smooshed together.  A big part of this course is Anatomy.  Several times a week we walk over to an Amphitheater in Duke Clinic and have anatomy lectures.  Immediately after lectures we’ll go into the lab for a couple hours and work on our cadaver dissection.  Each TBL team works on its own cadaver.  Also included in this course are Histology, Embryology, and Pathology.  Due to limited time, these topics also have assigned textbook readings and online lectures (which are usually about 75 minutes each) that we have to watch and take notes on before class meets so we can do team application work in class.  Brain and Body also includes Palpation where we work with partners to identify and palpate boney and soft tissue structures on one another.  There are always at least two textbook readings assigned for Anatomy and Palpation before class as well as handouts and lab protocols we have to review.  So all in all Brain and Body refers to Anatomy, Anatomy lab, Histology, Embryology, Pathology, and Palpation.

So there you have it.  In order to fit all this, we’re in class from about 8-4 or 5 every day, though we do usually get an hour for lunch.  But that’s been keeping me pretty busy.  Word on the street is that the first 6 weeks are the most intense and then things ease up a bit, so we shall see.  We’ve had a few rounds of iRA/gRAs, but we have yet to have our first exam.  The sheer quantity of information is quite astounding.  I have a feeling two years is going to go by quick!