This semester I had the opportunity to work as an intern at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in the Sports Medicine Department through the Play Strong Program. The Play Strong Program is a 12-week functional movement rehabilitation program that is targeted towards children living with, or recovering from chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, or the children may just struggle with their weight. The program promotes physical activity through play for the patients to learn how to live and maintain an active healthy lifestyle. The program has two classes a week with one of the classes being a physical activity lesson with stretches, exercises, games, and an activity at the end of the class that teaches ways to promote a healthy lifestyle at home; the other class in the week, the patients explore and play various sports and games like hokey, volleyball, and wiffle ball. Play Strong had two classes a night, where the first class, or the junior class had 6- to 10-year-old patients, and the second class, or the senior class had patients who were 11 or older. At the beginning and the end of the twelve weeks, the patients are evaluated, and re-evaluate to determine how their functional movement has changed.
As an intern, my responsibilities consisted of both administrative works, as well as leading both classes each week. The administrative responsibilities included tracking patient attendance through epic patients’ portal and excel, calling the patients parents to remind them of scheduled appointments, organizing paperwork and equipment, and lastly help conduct evaluations and re-evaluations. Through the administrative work, I learned a great amount about the time that goes in to running an out-patient program in different settings in a hospital, and I also learned a lot about functional movement screenings. The functional movement screening is a test consisting of 9 different exercises that tests a patient’s strength, flexibility, and endurance, and each patient is rated on a scale from 1-3 for each movement. The second, and more exciting responsibility of the internship was leading and conducting both the physical activity lesson, and game lesson each week. In order to lead and conducted the physical activity lessons each week, I would have to learn the exercises, stretches, and short games to teach to both the Junior and Senior class, and for the sports related class, I would have to do the same.
Throughout the 16 weeks I spent at the Play Strong Program, I made great connections with both the staff, and the patients involved in the program. I learned how to interact one on one with patients in a pediatric setting and group setting, conflict management with patients, and how to conduct professional administrative work. Each class brought new and exciting connections and stories with patients, and it gave me a great sense of accomplishment to see patients have fun with the lessons, learn how to incorporate physical activity in their day to day lives, and develop a passion for the sports they learned each week. Overall, my experience in the Play Strong Program was amazing, and it gave me wonderful insight on out-patient pediatric care and hospital administrative work. The Play Strong Program over the course of the semester was a great help in solidifying my want to be a provider in the health care community.
-Mackenzie Drews