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Pathophysiology knowledge is fundamental to deeply understand the process behind the injury, at a molecular, cellular, and tissue level. Therefore, it is important for Veterinary Physiotherapy students to understand the pathophysiology mechanisms of injuries and how rehabilitation intervention is related to them. Through my undergraduate studies in Veterinary Medicine, I had the opportunity to learn about the healing process of tissues in the modules of Pathology, Physiology, and Histopathology. However, it has been more than 13 years since then, and I found useful the refreshing of my knowledge with this module.

 

The subject I chose for my assignment was the articular cartilage repair, and the related rehabilitation techniques used in practice. The reason for my choice was the high incidence of arthritis I deal with every day in my profession. Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common joint disease in animals (Anderson et al., 2018). In this pathological condition, articular cartilage degeneration occurs (Levine and Millis, 2013). In practice, I see at least one new case of OA every two weeks, and this essay gave me the opportunity to study further the mechanisms behind it. It was mentioned by our lecturer that literature referring to cartilage would be limited. Despite that, I was interested in learning more about this tissue as this would contribute to my work as a clinician. 
 

The Pathophysiology assignment was the first long academic writing I did in my life (1500words). Even though I had the first experience earlier this year, by writing a critical review for another module, it was the first time I had to do such extended literature research. The time and effort needed for this essay proved to be more than I expected, and this caused me a lot of stress and anxiety. It is shown that efficient time management can help to improve anxiety levels(Wang and Wang, 2018), and this is a principle I need to apply in the future.  As mentioned before, being a vet surgeon, in a full-time basis, made my time management even more difficult and increased my stress. A study by Sahari et. al, reported that workplace can cause stress to part-time students who work at the same time (Sahari et al., 2013).  Consequently, I struggled a lot to have the assignment ready before the deadline. In previous feedback from our lecturer, it was pointed out the need to improve my writing skills. To manage that I had a one-to-one meeting with another tutor, Mr. Barral, for advice based on a small sample of my assignment. This really helped me to recognize some mistakes and correct them. Additionally, I studied all the sources given on the university’s Moodle page, which referred to academic writing. What really helped me structure my assignment was looking at a finished relevant piece of work from previous years provided by our lecturer. When I finally submitted my essay, I felt the satisfaction of completing a difficult task, but I had a subliminal worry about the feedback. Eventually, I received a 49/100. I was disappointed with my mark, but I fully understood the reasoning. Unfortunately, I had a 7 marks penalty because I could not restrict the word count and my writing skills would need further improvement. Specifically, I should focus on improving my critical reviewing of academic papers and presenting the differences between them. Grammar is another point that needed my attention. Lastly, I will need to learn how to correctly reference websites.

 

Despite my despondency, I feel I had a double profit from the process of writing this essay. I earned some useful knowledge on articular cartilage healing and at the same time, I trained in academic writing. Thinking about my future assignments, I will use the one-to-one tutorials again. Also, I will try to become more familiar with the academic language by reading various articles from academic journals.

 

 

 

 

REFERENCES

 

Anderson, K.L., O’Neill, D.G., Brodbelt, D.C., Church, D.B., Meeson, R.L., Sargan, D., Summers, J.F., Zulch, H., Collins, L.M. (2018) Prevalence, duration and risk factors for appendicular osteoarthritis in a UK dog population under primary veterinary care. Scientific Reports. 8(1), 5641.

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Levine, D., Millis, D.L. (2013) Canine Rehabilitation and Physical Therapy. 2nd ed. Elsevier.

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Sahari, S.H., Yusup, M.Y., Affidah, M., Aiza, J. (2013) Exploring Working Environment as a Stressor for Adult Students. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. 101, 564–574.

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Wang, P., Wang, X. (2018) Effect of Time Management Training on Anxiety, Depression, and Sleep Quality. Iranian Journal of Public Health. 47(12), 1822–1831.