Professioanl Artefact....

Hi everyone,


I haven't blogged in a while because I've been busy trying to finish my critical review to send to Paula as a first draft, hopefully it will be finished by this Thursday.
Has anyone started on their professional Artefact yet?? I'm really stuck on what to do.... one potential idea is a video for Dancers who are still at vocational dance school: it would be a sort of educational video on how to avoid injury when you are a professional in the industry, how to manage it correctly if you do get injured and information on what services are available to self employed Dancers in terms of therapy and treatment. I strongly believe that this education is lacking in vocational dance schools and help like this would of been very beneficial to me leaving school as a young Dancer.


Another idea is again a video, but this time for the Physiotherapists in my community of practice. It would show the collaboration of Dance, medicine and Science and highlight the therapy approaches used for Dancers facing an injury.


So I just have to decide who my target audience is.......what do you think?!?!


Katrina
x

NHS Dance injury Clinic

Carrying on from my last blog, here is a video from the launch of the NHS Dance injury clinic in 2012, at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in London:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyPslcRiQRA

New potential interviews

I am switching between so many different stages at the moment in the inquiry process that I can't keep track, it's definitely not as straight forward as I thought it was going to be!
I was talking to one of the paediatric physiotherapists at work about my research project, and I was explaining to her about my own personal experience of being injured at dance school. I told her that when I was injured in my first year I had to watch every class and take notes, with no personal therapy plan given to me to rehabilitate my injury and get me back to full fitness. This shocked her, and made me realise that there was no real guidance for me at school to recover from my injury, physically and Psychologically. I think this is why I have found my inquiry so interesting.
It is a field that is personal to me and it is something I can relate to- I want others to be intrigued by it too when I present my findings.

We also talked about my journey so far with interviewing professionals at work, and how many of the physiotherapists have never had a dancer come to them for treatment before. I have discovered their views on how they would approach the treatment of an injured dancer, but what treatment is actually given to professional dancers?

This was a light bulb moment for me as I have not yet been down the path of what treatment is given to injured dancers. The National Institute of Dance Medicine and Science is an institution that provides Dance injury Clinics around the UK; partnering with the NHS and private clinics. This was a shock to me as I had no idea there was a free service on the NHS providing specialist treatment for dancers.
The NHS specialist dance medicine clinics runs from the Royal national Orthopaedic hospital's central London outpatient assessment centre. The clinic is run by Dr Roger Wolman, MD, FRCP, FFSEM, Consultant in Rheumatology and sport and exercise medicine. He is supported by a specialist dance physiotherapist and two junior doctors. A referral can be made from your GP, and information on how to approach this is on the NIDMS website:
http://www.nidms.co.uk/healthcare

Here you can download referral information to take to your GP appointment and it also provides the clinics that are available for this service around the UK.
There is also the DANCE UK'S health practitioner directory on this link, which is a database of UK medical practitioners and complementary therapists with experience of working with dancers.
Dancers can also contact Helen Laws ( Manager of NIDMS, one dance UK) directly, to discuss which practitioner would be best suited to their complaint or injury.

So after several phone calls yesterday, there may be potential interviews in the pipe line with Helen Laws and Dr Roger Wolman, to hopefully discover what kind of treatment is available for Dancers in these specialised clinics around the UK. I am very excited about this, and I intend to use these interviews as part of my professional artefact.

I also found a BBC news article from 2012 when the dance injury clinic was first launched:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17846564

I do find it alarming that I didn't know anything about this service, particularly the free NHS service because when you are an injured free lance dancer, paying for private health care for your injury is out of the question. This service would of been extremely valuable to me throughout my dancing career.


Katrina
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Survey

So I have made a survey for self -employed dancers who have been injured in their career. I was originally going to just stick to my interviews but when I came across the organisations that are available for self-employed dancers facing an injury (that I knew nothing about,) I was interested to find out if anyone else has heard of these organisations. I was none the wiser to practices being specifically designed for injured dancers, particularly the NHS Dance injury clinic.

If anyone is interested to take part in this survey, please do, or share on Facebook to your Dancer friends! I'm really intrigued to see what the results will be.

http://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/LXPQN/

Thank you,

Katrina
X

Mapping out my ideas

As stated in a previous blog, I have started to brain storm my ideas and themes that I want to include in my inquiry. Now it's the challenge of choosing the literature I want to include in my project and beginning my literature reviews......help!!

Has anyone started their literature review yet??? Do we have to review each and every source we include in our inquiry? I think I'm confusing myself here because there's so much to do!

Any advice/help would be much appreciated!

Katrina x

Dance and Sports Science- Gjuum

I thought I'd share a video I came across on youtube whilst searching for different techniques Dancer's use in their training. This is a documentary which was shown at the 2014 Prix de Lausanne Ballet competition and it evolves around Patrick Rump, a Sports Scientist, and his practice 'GJUUM'.

Founded in January 2014, GJUUM is a clinic that collaborates a team of sports scientists, physiotherapists, sports psychologists, social workers, conditioning coaches and ballet masters who offer the innovative advances of sports science and medicine to dancers across the world.
The practice offers specific training methods to improve a dancer's performance, strength and overall confidence, particularly when they have returned to dancing after an injury.

Tamara Rojo, Artistic director of the English National Ballet, states in the documentary that she strongly believes Dance science should be incorporated into every national ballet school. She believes that if this tool was available to her at her younger age, many of her injuries sustained in her career would have been avoided. 

William Forsythe, Artistic director of The Forsythe company, said that: " Sports Science is like the secret weapon that we didn't know we had."

I find this so interesting, could sports science be integrated into the curriculum of vocational dance schools in the future? When I was injured at ballet school I didn't have any kind of therapy support or the facilities like the GJUUM practice available to me, I was only advised to do some pilates, watch class and to be honest, left to my own devices. 

The most compelling aspect for me from this documentary was the fact that Patrick Rump instilled a confidence in the dancer's throughout their rehabilitation process, so they could come back to dancing stronger than ever.

Here's the link to the documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLLc4mHRUGY

Katrina x

Middlesex Stay Day

I travelled to Hendon yesterday for a study day and met up with Paula- we discussed where I was in my inquiry so far and what I needed to do. My goal of the study day was to find sources of literature that challenge each other. I intend to view my sources as a 'Dinner Party'-

Who will I invite?
How will I open the conversation as the 'host'?
What would they think about my topic?
Who will agree and who will disagree?

I want to critically analyse my sources, so I am not just contextualising them, describing what they mean. I think this will be challenge for me as I have never attempted a task like this before. However, I believe that the dinner party imagery will help me grasp the concept of inviting different perspectives on my topic into my inquiry.

Once I have the Themes or ideas that I want to portray in my inquiry, I will make a large brainstorm of my topic on an A3 piece of paper with the subheadings coming off of it. I will then link the literature I have found that relates to these themes. Hopefully this will map everything out for me and make things slightly clearer in terms of starting my literature review and ultimately my critical reflection.

My Professional Artefact is just an idea at the moment, and Paula advised me to really think about the intended audience for my Artefact. I need to determine what my target audience is first before I start developing my idea. I potentially want to create a short film or powerpoint presentation of the inquiry process for my colleagues in my professional practice, i.e Physiotherapists. It would be more of an educational video of what I have discovered during my inquiry and it would give my work colleagues an insight into my project and how it relates to their practice.

Lastly, I find one-on-one conversations about module 3 and my inquiry so beneficial and I am hoping to travel up to Hendon again very soon. I am off work on Thursdays so if anyone else is up for meeting for a study day I'd be happy to organise it and I can book out a room online!

Let me know,

Katrina x