Sean is a Board-Certified Orthopedic Clinical Specialist and full-time Clinical Faculty member at the University of Southern California. He both teaches as well as sees patients at the university. He sees himself as a muscoskeletal detective and believes that one should challenge themselves to put in the work and the desire to be in the top 10% of their chosen profession. Sean feels blessed to have the opportunity to do what he does everyday!
Transcript
>> Shawn Tessin [phonetic], doctor of physical therapy. I'm full-time clinical faculty for the University of Southern California, and I'm the board-certified orthopedic clinical specialist. I see patients from the University. I also teach in the university. A typical day, so there's, I guess, two components. There's the clinical aspect and there's the academician side of things. So when I do in academics. So from a clinical standpoint, I see patients, which I absolutely love doing. I'm here three days out of the week on campus seeing patients. And, essentially, I call myself a musculoskeletal detective. As nerdy as that sounds. So when I work with my patients, what we're trying to do is we're trying to figure out as physical therapist why are patients run to the office to see us? So why do they have pain and how can we help them with their pain. So I meet a patient, I evaluate a patient, and within that evaluation, that process, I'm kind of working through the evaluation to determine the source of their symptoms, the source of their pain, to get to the bottom of why they have pain, and then trying to put together a treatment plan for that individual. After the evaluation, and I carry subsequent treatments, and so on, and so forth. The beauty of working with human beings is we're all different, right? And so even some of the most simplest cases can present themselves as challenging, but I definitely have had some pretty complicated cases. I had the opportunity as a physical therapy resident, so I did an orthopedic residency here at the university. And I worked with a patient who presented with a diagnosis of knee pain. And he had a very swollen knee. He was very irritated and in a lot of pain. He hurt it about three or four days prior, jumping up to try to dunk a basketball. Which as pretty impressive. >> Yeah. [Laughing]. I've tried to that. Really came that close. >> And in going through the evaluation, I was concerned that he may have caused some form of structural damage. That he may have torn a ligament or torn some of the cartilage within his knee. And so based upon my valuation, I thought strongly that he needed to get further evaluated. So I suggested to the physician assistant who's [inaudible] to me an MRI with contrast, and the physician agreed. And he got the MRI, and then sure enough he ended up tearing his patella, and then from that point, I recommended a surgery, one of our surgeons here in campus for him to see. And so what I liked about that whole process was, again, it kind of exemplified the musculoskeletal detective. So he had the diagnose of the knee pain. Obviously, his knee did hurt. But I had to be in a position to figure out based off my assessment as to why he was hurting. And then from there, also the opportunity as a physical therapist and to help drive his care a little bit. Not to take over his care, because that's not my job, but to be a part of the team. The health care management team. And to help assist him in finding this appropriate test, and the appropriate surgeons to properly manage him. And I think a lot of people don't really realize that you have the ability to do that as a physical therapist.
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