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DeeAnne Silvas: Through physical therapy you get know the patient a lot better, you're
there a lot more often to work with the patient, you get to know them better, and you have
a stronger rapport with the patients. They want to know someone cares and is willing
to make a difference. They often feel that maybe they're embarassed or they don't want
to come forward and ask for help, there's times when they wish people would notice without
having to ask for help. If we could improve people's knowledge and understanding of other
people's situations, then it would just be much easier for everyone involved.
Donna Fry: I have two projects with Woodside Church. The church is looking at becoming
more accessible. We have our church chancel up front that is not accessible because of
the stairs, so people can't get into the choir loft or up to the pulpit and so we want to
make that more accessible. So one student is working on physical design of that and
I have another student who's working more on making our minds accessible and how we
can be more approachable by people that have handicaps and how we can be more appropriate
in the way we interact. DeeAnne Silvas: For my service learning project,
I'm going to be working with Woodside Church and researching ways to increase awareness
of needs within the church for physical movement throughout the church and we're going to be
working with members of the church and an outside panel as well and expanding on people's
knowledge. Pastor Deborah Koehler: We hope the end result
is to upgrade our building and raise our awareness about people with various physical abilities.
Donna Fry: This service learning component of our curriculum really sets us apart. We're
often asked as physical therapists to do program development, marketing, to expanding programming
out into the community and many of our projects are just that.
Rajiv Lancy: They really pushed us to develop ideas, make us think outside the box. Get
educated, but at the same time be part of the community.
DeeAnne Silvas: I noticed things right away that I would have never noticed before I joined
the PT program--the doors--the width of the doors, the weight of the doors, is there another
way up these steps and I find my self all around the community noting these things in
all building and trying to think of a way, "well they could have done this" and "what
if they changed this" and just this simple thing could make such a difference in someone's
life.