Respond to the following posts and include the following:

• Questions for your peer regarding their post.
• Insight on a solution to an identified peer challenge.
• Resources that may be helpful related to your peers’ post.

Response 1

 Learning proper assessment of the musculoskeletal system brought about anticipated challenges experienced when learning assessment of a new systems from previous weeks. In part because I quickly realized before beginning new task it was necessary to review developing anatomy of that system to understand why a certain technique was needed to evaluate a health concern. While inspection and palpation are key components to assessment of musculoskeletal system evaluation of range of motion is an important assessment technique for this system especially when determining normal vs abnormal findings. For example, changes in range of motion with or without pain may likely involve additional testing i.e Apley scratch test.
Anticipated differences when assessing patients across the lifespan may be seen with the elderly population. Presentation of musculoskeletal complaints could vary significantly in this population due to the natural aging process, comorbidities, polypharmacy and decrease function of joints where provider faces challenges with diagnosis and treatment of elderly individuals.
Foster, Hartvingsen, & Croft (2012) article outline importance of early evaluation and treatment of patients presenting with musculoskeletal complaints with potential change in primary car role from general practitioner to physiotherapists, osteopaths, and chiropractors for common musculoskeletal conditions. With thousands of individuals suffering from back pain alone they felt need to expand primary care role for musculoskeletal conditions. 

Reponse 2

 
The focus for this week is the musculoskeletal system. As the course text mentions, the clinician can perform certain maneuvers to test for range of motion to infer what parts of the musculoskeletal system are experiencing injury or causing pain. I like this systematic approach to forming a diagnosis. I think the most difficult part of this, however, has been refamiliarizing myself with the underlying anatomy of the structures being assessed. As the book also mentions, knowing what structures control or are connected to can help the provider know more about the injury or condition. Musculoskeletal anatomy is something I was introduced to and learned in nursing school but did not have to keep in mind often when I gave inpatient obstetric care at the bedside. I think simply continuing to study anatomy of the musculoskeletal system will help me become familiar with it once again. Some resources I can use for this include our course textbook or other anatomy books. It may sound a little unconventional, but anatomy coloring books have helped me in the past for other systems, and I think one would be useful in this situation as well.

Due to the nature of aging and the tendency of some chronic diseases to influence deterioration of the musculoskeletal system I anticipate on seeing many differences while assessing patients across the lifespan. For example, children and adolescents may more commonly present with injuries due to activity. Sports injuries are seen often in this population with a reported incidence of about one in ten children every year (Rosendahl & Strouse, 2016). Older adults on the other hand may present with pain due to chronic or degenerative conditions. Musculoskeletal pain in any population can be so debilitating it inhibits activity. In fact, this type of pain is the leading cause of disability worldwide (Babatunde et al., 2017) with lower back pain being the most common musculoskeletal affecting adults (Allegri et al., 2016). One article I found that can help with this summarizes causes and treatment of chronic pain. It can be found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK553030/.