LEADER IN THE FIELD

Mandy McCrory

November 15, 2010

Leader in the Field

Lead the Way

I am a health and exercise major and my goal is to be accepted to PT school and become a Physical Therapist. For my Leader in the Field I interviewed Mark Brown a physical therapist at Goddard Health Center.

Mark Brown attended Southeastern OK St. University  in Durant, OK  and PT school at OU health sciences center, where I hope to attend. In order to be a PT a bachelors degree is needed and you need to attend an accredited physical therapy school, which last three years.

Mark was a college athlete and was around a lot of other athletes who were getting injured. According to Mark he loved "the idea of working with people to get them better and back to playing and decided to look into Physical Therapy as a career." 

"My favorite thing about my job is seeing the excitement in people when they know they can do something they have not been able to do in a long time like running or playing a sport. Its exciting to give people their life back,"said Mark Brown. I love helping people and the kind of excitement Mark talks about is what I dream for in my job. While there are amazing things to every job there also the things you dread doing or the hard parts to a job, for Mark its dealing with the legality of healthcare and following the rules of insurances that sometimes puts limits on what you can do with people. 

According to Mark, in order to be a good physical therapist you need to be a people person and have a good grasp on fitness and health, as well as the ability to talk to people and encourage them to do things they might not want to do.  As for leadership, Mark believes it is vital for every job in the work field, especially in the health are. Mark says leadership is important for a few reasons. The first is to make sure that the work field is always going forward and progressing. Without leadership, we would still be stuck in the past and not advancing with new treatment techniques. The second reason is that patients respond better to therapists that show good leadership qualities. You cant get someone motivated to work and get better unless you have some sort of leadership to your personality.

I learned many things about the Physical Therapy work field in my interview with Mark Brown, I loved talking to someone with the job I somehow hope to be involved in. My last question to Mark before I left was what kind of advice would you give to someone who is interested in physical therapy? (me for instance) Marks response was to go and shadow as many different therapists as you can to make sure this is the type of career you want to be in. The other would be to keep your grades up, because it doesn’t matter how great a therapist you can be, if your grades aren’t good, you won’t get into PT school. In order to learn more about physical therapy and the different areas you can work in go to www.bls.gov/oco/ocos080.htm.  

FUTURE @ OU

During my time here at OU I can see myself maturing and growing up quite a bit. I also can see myself achieving the goals I have set for myself like making good grades and graduating. I can also see myself figuring out what I want to do with myself, as in my career. Whether it be Physical Therapy, what i want to do now or something else. If I could do anything at OU, Im not exactly sure what it would be, but I know I want to get very involved on campus. The thinks I am interested in are sports, working with younger kids, volunteering and student government.

ATTITUDE

Attitude plays a huge role in completing any kind of task. If you do not have a positive, hardworking and can do attitude while working then the group will have a hard time getting things done! It only takes one person's bad attitude to bring a group down, and then it will seem like the task is that much harder to grasp.

My mom has always had a great attitude. She is always so encouraging and has always pushed me to strive that much further. I have never seen my mom quit on something or say she can not do it. She always strives to do better and that is through her attitude that she has achieved so much.

"Our attitudes are our most important assets" is a great quote. Our attitude is the base of everything we do. We can decide how we want things to go or end based on our attitude. I believe some one with a great attitude can make a situation better.

Problem Solving Strengths

My top five STRENGTHS are Learner, Context, Arranger, Harmony, and Restorative. The strengths I have that can help me solve problems are Harmony, Restorative, and Arranger. Harmony helps me SOLVE problems because I hate fights and I believe in order to help solve a problem you need to be able to work together and figure out what is wrong. Thats were Harmony helps. Being Restorative helps me solve problems by finding out what the problem is, why it started, how it started and how to sole it. Lastly my strength of being Restorative helps solve problems because i am ORGANIZED and know what is going on most of the time. Being a learner helps and hurts problem solving. I love sitting back and watching what to do and LISTENING to other people, which hurts because most of the time I know the answer or a resolution and I do not say it. It is hard for me to hear other people argue or seeing them really disorganized, and it is also hard for me to be with someone who does not listen to everyone else's ideas.