Jenna:  Phil there's a lot of new grad PTs out there right now. So give me if you can think back, give me a big win you remember from early on in your career and give me a big learning item that's from the beginning of your career.

Phil:  Wow! That might take a minute to think about. I'll tell you a story on my first patient, though. I bring back my first patient. I literally call back my first patient as a new grad, and he walks up and he's like "So how long have you been doing this?" And I'm like, let's see here. It took you about 10 seconds to walk from the chair to here, so that's about how long. But I played it off as, "Well, if you consider all the training and things like that, it's been about three years, but it's my first day on today's job."
But gosh, big win?

Jenna:  And not necessarily like you changed a life, the first one, but where you either felt, okay, this is right.

Phil:  I think I need to ask you this question.

Jenna: I'm sorry. I don't know...

Many of us come up in the field wanting to make an impact. We see leaders from the time we are students and want to someday become one. But how does that happen? Is there something we can do?

How do you find your area of passion and expertise in physical therapy? When you're a new PT or trying to find your place, is there anything that can help you figure it out?

Jenna: Okay, Phil so how do you find your biggest passion or area of passion within physical therapy? So when I think of you, I automatically think of injury reduction. I think of movement. I think of a lot of different things that you're very well known for and that you're super passionate about. And I struggled with this early on of like, how do you find your thing, I guess you could say. And I feel like a lot of PT students ask like, how do you find your thing? So I guess my question is, how do you find that area that you're most passionate about?

Phil: Yeah, I think that this took me a while to fully understand. I think we have it backwards.
I think we have it such that find your passion and then follow it. I think the advice actually should be
go do a bunch of stuff and you will find your...

Dear PT Students,

No one told me that it could be more effective to have multiple personalities when working with patients than it would be to have multiple treatment options. 

I do not mean that in a dysfunctional way, but rather in terms of relatability and communication.

When you finish PT school you want to know everything, take tons of continuing education, and have a million skills when it comes to treatment.  But all of that takes time, experience, and constant refinement.

There are an endless number of ways to get patients moving better and feeling better.  Yet if you cannot get buy in, then much of that knowledge and skill is lost.

Patient education is more than how you talk to patients and more than avoiding medical jargon.  It requires you to be the person your patient needs you to be.  Some patients will need to joke around, some will want to talk the entire session, some will need encouragement, some will need to be reigned in, some will want...

Being a student isn't easy.  You're constantly trying to prove yourself and are often surrounded by PTs that have a lot more experience.  No one has it all figured out and students, you don't need to either.

After I went to my first Combined Sections Meeting for PT, I came home with twelve new t-shirts.  I thought this was pretty awesome.  I’ve been a sucker for a free t-shirt for as long as I can remember and I cavalierly stopped by any booth promising a free shirt.  It didn’t matter what it was, I wanted it.  Truthfully, I didn’t even know what half the t-shirts were advertising.  

During the same time, I put my email in a drawing for free books.  Turns out I got an email a few days later stating I won a stack of different books relating to physical therapy.  I didn’t open a single one of those books for four years, but I did begrudgingly give away a few very worn t-shirts.  

My point?  Not all free things are created equal and in the past I’ve not always been good about discerning which is more meaningful.  But I will say, until I cleaned out my closet last weekend… I had way too many...