{"id":162,"date":"2009-12-15T11:40:34","date_gmt":"2009-12-15T17:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.195.103.127\/health\/2009\/12\/15\/belmont-pt-grad-featured-in-east-tennessee-newspaper-story\/"},"modified":"2012-12-26T13:17:21","modified_gmt":"2012-12-26T19:17:21","slug":"belmont-pt-grad-featured-in-east-tennessee-newspaper-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/2009\/12\/15\/belmont-pt-grad-featured-in-east-tennessee-newspaper-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Belmont PT Grad featured in East Tennessee Newspaper Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sp-cookforsun.jpg\" Belmont alumna Erin Cook was featured in her hometown newspaper, The Elizabethton Star, for her work in the Sports Residency Program at Physical Therapy Services in Elizabethton, Tenn. Cook, who received her Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from Belmont in 2009, is preparing to take the Certified Sports Physical Therapy Specialty exam. Cook is currently working with with Dr. Danny Smith, a Belmont adjunct professor, and his son Dr. Justin Smith, a 2006 graduate of Belmont’s School of Physical Therapy.<\/p>\n


\nHere’s the full article:
\nPTS intern helps Smiths serve area better
\nBY IVAN SANDERS
\nSPORTS EDITOR
\nElizabethton was playing one of its biggest games of the season against CAK. It pitted the number five and six teams in the state according to the polls. Unfortunately for the Cyclones, they would see their starting quarterback, an offensive lineman, their kicker-receiver defensive back, and a starting
\ndefensive back succumb to injuries and have to come out of the contest.
\nEach time a player went down on the turf, there was a young woman who would dash across the field to where the injured player went down with a back pack on her shoulder to access the player\u2019s injury. Her name is Erin Cook and she currently holds the distinction of being the only intern on staff of a sports physical therapy office in the state \u2014 possibly the only one in the Southeast.
\nDr. Danny Smith and his son, Dr. Justin Smith, who operate Physical Therapy Services in Elizabethton, brought Cook on board to give her the ultimate opportunity to hone her skills. Cook graduated with a Bachelor\u2019s Degree in Public Health from the University of Clemson in 2006. She went on to earn her Doctorate Degree in Physical Therapy from Belmont University in 2009.
\nFor Cook, working in physical therapy has been like a glove \u2013 it\u2019s been a perfect fit. \u201cWhen I was at Clemson, I took a class in Anatomy and fell in love with it and knew I wanted to be in the health field, but I also wanted a life,\u201d said Cook, a Dobyns-Bennett High School alumnus.
\n\u201cIn P.T., you can go into different settings as well as being able to have a family. You also can either work full time or part time based upon what you want
\nto do.\u201d
\nCook became familiar with the Smiths\u2019 while at Belmont as part of an eight-week rotation that she completed as part of her studies.
\nWhile completing the rotation, Cook developed a love-affair in working with athletes who
\nwent down to injury and came to the office for treatments. \u201cI fell in love with working with athletes due to the complex treatments they can tolerate and see them return to action with quick results,\u201d continued Cook.
\nThe opportunity to come back to the Elizabethton area after graduating Belmont came as a result of the Smiths\u2019 extending an intense 13-month, 2000-hour internship with Physical Therapy Services which would allow Cook to study for her Certified Sports Physical Therapy Specialty exam.
\nCook said that working in a setting which offers such specialized P.T. tools such as the Trezer, which is a sports-specific instrument that only a handful of P.T.\u2019s in the Southeast have, and the Biodex, which is only the second machine sold in the Southeast that allows work on passive range of motion postoperation, has been worth its weight in gold.
\nBeing able to actually see an athlete from the initial time of injury to a complete return is also a rewarding part of the internship. \u201cThe number one rewarding thing for me has been the ability to see a player from the time they are initially injured, evaluate the injury, have them in therapy, get them through surgery if needed, and then rehabilitate them and get them back to action,\u201d stated Cook.
\nCook stated that she was not sure what she would like to do once the internship is completed because the possibilities are open-ended, but the opportunity to possibly return to her high school alma mater or
\nwork with the East Tennessee State athletic department is just a couple of possibilities. Cook also recognized that with the highly-respected reputations of the Smiths\u2019, there could be doors opened to her that she otherwise might not have.
\nAccording to Dr. Justin Smith, having Cook on board has been beneficial for not only her, but for the service that is being extending by her presence. \u201cHaving Erin on board has allowed us to extend further into the community to service the area better,\u201d stated Dr. Smith. \u201cShe has allowed us to be at more sporting events and take better care of the needs
\nof our community.
\n\u201cThe internship program is definitely something we want to continue, even after Erin has completed her time with us.\u201d Cook is a native of Kingsport and is engaged to Mr. Bentley Hankins. She has two cats \u2013 three-year old Ansley and four-month old Bella.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Belmont alumna Erin Cook was featured in her hometown newspaper, The Elizabethton Star, for her work in the Sports Residency Program at Physical Therapy Services in Elizabethton, Tenn. Cook, who received her Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from Belmont in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chs","category-physical-therapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1652,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/1652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}