I have come to learn (its only taken me the whole year) that accurate assessments are so important to potential and prognosis of a patient. Recently another student and I were handed a patient to work with on our spinal prac. We were to work with this patient together. This patient had been put on the list of patients who are seen daily by the PTA for general stretching, strengthening, and some form of cardio regime that was strucutred, didn't particulalry need supervision nor was it all that patient specific. I have a few issues here which I will talk about in subsequent blogs (so stay tuned) but for now we are talking about assessment. MMT, tone, ROM, sensation and whatever else you see fit are the general areas of assessment. By now, i, and no doubt all of us, feel pretty confdent in our abilities to assess. we are aware to look out for 'compensatory strategies' or 'trick movements' but beingtold that and having it smack bang in front of your face is two entirely different things. Lets take sensation. For us this included light touch, sharp blunt, and propriocepton. on inital examination we had discovered this paatient to have altered sensation throughout bilateral limbs and altered proprioception, nil sharp/blunt. it turns out he had no propioception, very little snsation and these are two MASSIVE points in whether this patient will stand/walk again and we missedit, so had everyone else including doctors, registra's, other physios. how does this happen? good question, just note that whwnever we assess a patient, to them it can feel like a est, so they want to give us the correct asnwers, therefore him guessing, or saying what he though we wanted to hear, changed the results we were getting and as a result, we thought he was more able than he acutally was.