Melissa Trapnell

• Serial Casting in the OR and as an outpatient
• Construction of night-splints out of flexible casting material
• Management of complex burn reconstructive patients, including care of new full thickness and split thickness skin grafts
• Edema management

Officially staffed as a burn therapist/hand therapist, but mostly worked as an acute care physical therapist with pediatric orthopedic patients. Also participated in cast removal and re-application, as well as 1 week in the OR with the plaster technician in applying immediate post-operative plaster casts. Also participated in "over-wrapping" plaster casts with fiberglass, as well as windowing these casts for wound checks and for pin removal by woundcare nurse.

• Serial casting and splinting
• Scar massage
• Interim and custom compression garments
• Scar desensitization, Silicone and mineral oil gel therapy
• Home exercise programs, Pediatric burn physical therapy
• Custom conformers, LTS face masks
• Goniometry and treatment of burn contractures
• Splinting patients post injury and post operatively
• Assessing and caring for reconstructive patients

Acute care physical therapist at a 517-bed hospital with multiple specialties, including neurology and cardiac care.

Diagnoses treated included amputation, orthopedic surgery, reconditioning, strokes, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, severe obesity-related illness, alcoholic-induced ataxia, meningitis, and wound patients.