THE BIG DAY!!!! (February 12, 2009)

From Shyla McCarthy ‘06 and Emily Saathoff ‘06…

Last night after our classes and after writing our blog, we put on our walking shoes and took off to see more sites. We saw the Bellagio water fountain show.  The sites here are overwhelming.  Everything, even the Walgreens and CVS pharmacies are lit up with bright lights.  It is hard to find an ordinary, non-expensive restaurant on the strip, because they serve a lot of exotic foods.

We presented our poster from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Lots of individuals stopped to view our poster.  Many commented that our research was excellent and thanked us for being there.  One of the individuals who noticed our poster was Colleen Flannery, an Illinois Physical Therapy Association executive director.  It was a great opportunity to share our research with others in the profession, and we really enjoyed explaining it to them.

We then attended the exhibit hall and talked with representatives from companies that provide books and courses to help us pass our national PT boards.  We then attended the course “FUNctional Evidence:  New Approaches to Functional Therapy.”  We learned about more fun, functional interventions to prescribe to our patients.

We are sad this is our last day here, but we are grateful for the opportunity we had to present the research we worked long and hard on.  We think it is wonderful that the second-year class was able to come here together, and it reminded us of our class when we went to CSM 2008 in Nashville.  We hope that future Bradley University DPT classes will follow and experience we all did.

We would like to thank everyone for following our journey at CSM 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada.  We have had a wonderful time this week, and we will never forget it.  We have gained knowledge that will help us in our profession, and we obtained the experience of a lifetime presenting our research at CSM!!!