My Pediatric Observation Essay

Having worked as a rehab aide in an outpatient clinic, my pediatric observation experience was completely different from what I am used to seeing. The therapist I observed was Allie Ribner who works at All Children’s Child Development and Rehab Center. Each session was completely different from one another for the session was geared towards the goals of the child and families. I found this to be a great learning experience for I saw a wide variety of different treatments and age range from 14 months to 15 years old.
The first patient I saw was a 14 month old boy who sustained a non-accidental head injury. He underwent surgery in July that relieved the excess pressure and fluid around his brain, resulting in him becoming a left hemiplegic.

Due to his injury, his motor development has now started from the beginning. His god mother stated that he is able to roll from prone to supine and supine to prone, and her goals for him is not to only improve his motor develop but also to get him to use his left hand more and to keep him from sucking his right thumb. While he is left hemiplegic, he still has some use of his left arm and one of the goals is trying to get his brain to remember that he has a left arm. Therefore, during his session the therapist worked on his prone on elbows while having him play in that position, rolling onto his right side to try to use his left hand, sitting with support, and working on his abdominal and flexor strength by pulling up to sitting from supine.
Our second patient was a 15 year old girl who had Ewing Sarcoma in her hip, resulting in her having to get a right hemipelvectomy. Unfortunately, the surgeon did not specify what he did with muscle reattachment to the leg, so some of her initial visits consisted muscle tests for different groups, to help determine where her muscles were relocated and attached to. Two of the girl’s main goals are to be able to drive and to return to marching band. Therefore, during her session Allie worked mainly on her shifting weight and gaining strength into her right leg. By doing so she had her put on what they call a suit, which has several resistance bands that can attach to different parts to help facilitate the use of her muscles. One main ground she wanted the girl to help facilitate was her hip flexors to help with walking, weight shifting, squatting, and getting up and down from the floor. I also got to watch the girl ride a bike for the first time since her surgery.
The last patient we saw was a 7 year old boy who was recently diagnosed with autism, but is coming to therapy for his dyspraxia and ataxia.

His session was more of a reassessment, and consisted of the administration the Buininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, which assess fine and gross motor. In order for Allie to give the child the test she let him choose which ones he wanted to start with such as running, hopping, or throwing a ball, making the test easier to administer. She allowed him to set up part of an obstacle course after he completed a section of the test to keep him motivated. However, since the test is long and the child will get tired she only administered half of it today and told the mom to work on a few things that he didn’t excel at today.
Overall, I found this to be a great experience, as it allowed me to see more of what pediatric physical therapy entails. I like how therapy is not about just having the child perform an exercise 10 times, but the therapist makes it enjoyable for the child. However, I never really had an interest in development pediatrics and always felt if I did do pediatrics, I would want to be more on the sports and orthopedic end. Although I would not mind spending more time in a developmental pediatric clinic to see if I would grow more of interest, for I do love working and seeing kids

grow.