Welcome to the PT Rebels Podcast.

This is the place to learn how you can become a PT rebel and take charge of your own health and wellness. We will help you find answers to your questions about pain, injury, and the path towards healing in the most efficient and effective way possible.

I’m your host, Dr. Gina Fick.

On today’s episode, I’d just like to talk about how I got to this place and my background and experience level. I grew up in the North Texas area in Dallas, Fort Worth area. And was a multi-sport athlete in high school. I played volleyball, basketball, ran track and cross country, played tennis and was just very active in sports and had a variety of injuries. Um, some pretty severe ankle sprains, but nothing that really kept me outta sport for a long time until my freshman year in college. Fifth game into the season.

We were in Oklahoma and I tore my right ACL and medial meniscus. That was a season ending injury for me, and I had to figure out how to move forward from that point on. That was in 1993, and I had ACL reconstruction in December of 1993. I met my physical therapist in December who carried me through and inspired me to become the best physical therapist that I can be now because of the impact that she had on my life.

For physical therapist, the entry level degree is a doctorate in physical therapy. But when I graduated from physical therapy school in 1999, the entry level degree was a master of physical therapy degree, which I obtained in June of 1999. And I went back in 2001 and started a terminal post-professional degree program at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and obtained a doctorate science degree in physical therapy in 2006.

During my time at Texas Tech University, I conducted biomechanical research aimed at trying to figure out the differences in ACL injuries between males and females and how we could try to prevent those injuries. It was a passion of mine just because of what I went through personally and my own experience. And then when I went through the doctorate of science program, I continued that research at Texas Tech University. Looking at gender specific differences in cutting and landing.

When I started working in 1999, I specifically pursued sports medicine and sports specific outpatient rehab centers to work in. And the jobs were, the jobs back then were very difficult to find, especially for females. And so I was fortunate enough to find. A outpatient sports medicine job in Waco, Texas, and that’s how I started my career. We did outreach and sports coverage for local football teams every Friday night. We hosted, um, Saturday morning injury clinics. We did pre-participation physicals, so I just dove into the sports specific outpatient world because I knew that was a passion of mine and I wanted to serve athletes.

I started my own practice in 2017 because I saw how the traditional healthcare and traditional physical therapy model was failing patients, and I knew that there could be a better way to move forward with patient care. And so I started my own practice in 2017 with a goal of providing one-on-one value-based care versus some of the types of care that I saw in PT Mills and.

After practicing for about 18 years at that time. I thought, well, I’m either going to have to just stop physical therapy care altogether, or I have to find a better way to do this. I had so many people tell me that my ideas wouldn’t work, that they would fail, that they were horrible ideas. They laughed at me.

One lady patted me on the back and started crying, and she said, I’m so sorry that you think this model of care will work. And I’ve always been one to, if I believe in something strongly enough. To move forward with that idea. I presented it to my husband at the time, we had four small children, and he was very supportive in that, and he said, I think you should do it.

So, um, when I started my own practice, I didn’t have any savings specifically for starting my own practice. I remember going to the bank and trying to figure out how I was going to, to finance this or fund this, and I decided just to start simply, and I took out a $10,000 line of credit, which I paid off within about four months, and I started doing mobile physical therapy. At the time, I didn’t wanna get. Hooked into a big, expensive, long-term loan situation. I didn’t really have the money to start my own practice in a big office space type setting.

So I hit the road and decided to do mobile outpatient physical therapy care on a cash pay basis. And I started just developing a lot of relationships in the community. I started, um, making a lot of connections, spending a lot of time volunteering. Um, I really immersed myself in the community. To try to make those connections. And I feel like it’s really paid off at this point to now we’re in a physical location after, um, you know, since 2017.

Now we’re May, 2023. I have, besides myself, I have two full-time physical therapists, a full-time admin, and we’re looking for space to grow into. We really enjoy spending time with our children. They’re the most important aspects of our lives. They’re our priority. Um, one of the reasons why. I started this business as well, is to be able to have a flexible schedule and be able to prioritize their events, their school schedule, vacations, because I didn’t wanna miss out on time with them. And although it’s very challenging sometimes to try to balance all of that, especially as we’ve gotten busier, they remain our number one priority and. They’re so fun. We have a 15-year-old who’s a freshman in high school who runs track and field, and we chase him around the country, um, because he’s been very successful, thankfully, in, in his track and field endeavors. We have, um, two other boys who are 14 and 12. We have a little girl who’s 10, and so they all lead very active and busy lives, and it’s just very fun to be able to be a part of their lives and balance having this career. But ultimately it’s all for them and for their benefit so that we can provide a very, um, fulfilled life for them.