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 wanted to talk with you all about what makes an ideal client experience here at PHY Physical Therapy and Sports Performance. I hope this information is really helpful and informative to you all, and I hope it helps you understand what questions to ask before seeking out physical therapy and how to find a physical therapist that is the right fit for you. We see a wide variety of active adults and athletes of all ages at our clinic, anywhere from the youth. Athlete or the youth in general from ages, you know, seven and eight and up. To be honest, we have active adults and athletes up to the ages of, I think our oldest patient right now is in his mid eighties. So you know, we see a wide variety of athletes and are very skilled and equipped to see those anywhere from the youth athlete to the high school athlete, collegiate athlete, and professional athlete. We also see people who are not technically competitive athletes, but just want to remain active. I think when you’re seeking out a physical therapist, you need to find a physical therapist that’s the right fit for you. And sometimes that’s hard to know because number one, some patients don’t even really understand what physical therapy is, or maybe they’ve had a negative experience with physical therapy in the past, so they’re a little hesitant to even seek out physical therapy. Then number two, there are so many different types of physical therapists out there and their specialties. So sometimes from the patient point of view or perspective, it can be difficult to try to even figure out what direction they should go. So a patient who’s seeking out our services, hopefully they can find through a lot of our patients, find us through Google Ads or through word of mouth referrals, sometimes from physician referrals. So. There’s different types of leads that we get into our clinic. Some may have a general idea of what, what we do based on what their friend or coach has told them. Some have no idea. They just liked what they saw online on the website. And some patients, um, have been told by their physician that we are the person that they should come see based on the procedure or condition that they have. That being said, I think someone who is seeking out help from FIG PT M performance needs to know that. We are a smaller private practice, a niche based practice. We do see active adults and athletes of all ages. We are out of network or cash-based clinic, and we choose to be that so that we can give you the type of care that we feel like you deserve. We are not dictated by insurance companies on what we can or can’t treat. We aren’t dictated by insurance companies on how many visits you can have, and we really have the freedom to give you the very best skilled care possible. We don’t hire rehab techs or aids, so that means for the entire hour long session that you’re with us, you’ll be getting the expert care from a physical therapist one-on-one care in order to help you meet your goals, in order to help you get better as quickly and safely as possible in order to help you return to the sport and activity you love. We have chosen this model because we have seen traditional PT and. Bigger box or PT mill type settings fail. Patients come to us and they seek out our services because they’ve been in those types of settings and they haven’t enjoyed the type of care that they’ve gotten. And quite honestly, they don’t get better or don’t see the results that they wanna see. We are also experts in sports physical therapy, and we understand athletes and what it takes to get back to your sport. We have equipment and the skills necessary in order to help. Objectively, identify any deficits that you have and help you return to that sport as quickly and safely as possible, and communicate and collaborate with your coaches, athletic trainers, parents, whoever it might be that’s on your team in order to help you achieve the results that you want. I’ve seen the system work really well, especially in a collaborative environment, and that’s what we’re trying to accomplish and achieve here at our practice, and we truly want the very best for you. We hire the very best in our employees. We hire the very best in our administrative staff to give you the top-notch patient experience from start to end in your patient care journey. The one thing that we want to try to promote or accomplish is to have patients be able to come in as quickly as possible to address their issue or condition. When patients are hesitant and aren’t sure what direction they should go in their care, we offer a free discovery visit. I just did one this morning a few hours ago, and the patient actually was trying to reach a different clinic in the area and she stumbled upon our practice. She thought she was calling one clinic and got ours and she said, you know, I’m, I’m so happy that happened. It’s funny how things work out, but she was trying to call a practice. To get help with a certain condition that she has. And she had had the a runaround experience essentially. So she’s been trying to get in for physical therapy treatment for over three months now. At almost every level, they’ve dropped the ball from the referral process to the scheduling process. When she called to schedule PT with this clinic, they told her, oh, I’m sorry, we can’t find your referral. And had her call her physician back ball drop. That person on the end of the line should have said, you know what? We’re so happy you called. We are so excited to get you started with your care. Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna get you on the schedule. We want you to meet with one of our physical therapists. We’re gonna get you in as quickly as possible to address this because we know that you’ve been waiting now for several months to get help, and we’re so sorry that it’s taking you that long to get help. But we we’re going to help you and we’re gonna help you get in quickly so that we can give you some answers. Instead, the ball was dropped once again. And so because of her frustration in the process, she said, you know, I don’t even care at this point what it costs. I just need help and that’s why I’m here. So we brought her in for a screening or a discovery session so that we could sit down and have communication and start to form that therapeutic alliance. I’m not sure if she’s going to come back for an evaluation or not, but we had that initial connection and discussion. I need her to understand, number one, that I care, number two, that I understand her condition, and number three, I know I can help her and to get that across just so that she has some hope and that she has something to look forward to and place her trust in. And I think that, you know, that is the beginning of a relationship that we want to foster. So through our discovery sessions or free screening sessions that we do. We are really just trying to initiate or start that therapeutic alliance so that patients can understand that we are fully invested in helping them. We are experts in our field and we will help them get better as quickly and safely as possible no matter what it takes. So for us, it’s really important to first understand what your goals are. We wanna hear really where you’re coming from. We wanna understand what has your past experience with physical therapy been. What is your understanding of physical therapy? We want you to be completely open and honest with us about any fears or concerns you might have about the physical therapy process. And at that first visit, we are really working on creating trust and building buy-in. And we want you to express to us not only what your goals are, but how you’re feeling throughout the visit, throughout the process. And at each visit we reassess how. Last visit was, were you sore from that visit? What exercises did you complete at home? Were you able to complete those? How did those feel? How do you feel like those exercises are helping you begin to return to sport or resume some of the functional goals and activities that you have? And at each visit, you are working one-on-one again with one of our physical therapists. A rehab Techer aide, and we are able to critique those exercises. We are able to give you physical and verbal feedback on how you’re doing those exercises or activities, and we’re able to explain to you why we’re doing a certain exercise and activity so that that can carry over into a functional movement. For instance, if you are a sprinter and you lack dorsiflexion range of motion in your ankle. That is gonna affect the force production in your ankle and foot. So if your foot is restricted or your ankle is restricted, that’s going to number one, affect how much power you can put through that foot or ankle. And so we will explain to you that we’re doing certain manual therapy techniques to help restore that. Dorsiflexion will teach you how to do exercises on your own in between sessions to maintain that dorsiflexion range of motion. Will help you understand how you perhaps can have your coach videotape those phases in the sprint cycle so that you can see if that’s transitioning over well to the track or to a different sport. And then we at the next visit say, all right, well how did you feel? How did that go? Okay, great. You feel better. Let’s progress this movement even further. Then we just, we, we work as a team. I think it’s so important to find a physical therapist that cares enough and values enough to create a collaborative relationship with you that you feel like they’re your number one fan. One of the fun things that we get to do here at F PTM performance is to work with more elite level athletes and professional athletes. And I think one thing that differentiates. Elite professional athletes from the other patients that we see is that they are very in tune with their body and their needs. They understand exactly what they’re needing and what they’re looking for, and typically they’re a little bit more experienced and knowing how to communicate those needs with us. So when a professional athlete comes in. They oftentimes are seeing multiple providers. It could be massage therapy, they could be seeing a therapist that specializes in acupuncture, chiropractic. So we really are reliant upon that athlete’s ability to communicate well with us and tell us exactly what they think they need. And usually we really respect that because at that point, when the athletes reach the professional level, they’ve had a lot of care, they’ve had a lot of injuries. They’re really specific on, you know, telling us one day it might be, Hey, I just need a flush. I just need you to kind of flush out. I’m, um, going into practice in about an hour and I just feel like I need some soft tissue work. They will come in and say, I’m really tight back in my shoulder blade area, am my thoracic spine. Can you, you know, work on that? Maybe do a manipulation of my back. Can you work on dry needling or scraping around my shoulder? So they’re more specific in knowing. What types of care they need, what tools that we have, and how that can help them. Another thing is that it involves a lot of collaboration. So when you’re working with a professional athlete, for instance, a couple of years ago we worked with Janine. Becky. Janine went to high school at Valor Christian, she went to Texas Tech and played soccer there and now professionally, and also played soccer for the Canadian national team. And won a gold medal with the Canadian national team in the last summer Olympics, which was really cool. But she came to us about six weeks prior to the Olympics and had an issue that she was working through, and she was very specific on who we needed to collaborate with on her team. And it was a daily collaborative effort. We collaborated with her sports scientists, her physical therapists, her athletic trainers. We sent them exactly the treatment that she was doing, her strength and conditioning program, and it was a daily communication effort so that they could understand and trust what we were doing and also understand where she was at in the process functionally, and they would adjust her programming accordingly. So, you know, we’re not doing that as much at the youth or high school level, but at the professional level it involves a lot more detail and a lot more. Just attention to those details so that number one, the athlete and their care team can trust that we are doing the right thing for that athlete. But number two, they can trust that they’re progressing them in appropriate way, functionally on the field so that they can avoid injury risk in the future as well. So it’s really important for us to, you know, know what we’re doing. We have to be experts in our field to work with professional athletes. They’re gonna know really quickly if you know what you’re doing or not, because they’ve had. Care in the past that’s really crummy and they’ve had care that’s top notch. And so we need to be top notch to earn their trust and respect or else they’re gonna find someone else really quickly. So I think also we need to respect their privacy needs. So if a professional athlete comes into our practice, we try to give them privacy that they need and desire. We don’t, you know, want patients coming up docking or asking for autographs and stuff like that. The patient is here to get better. They’re a patient like anyone else, if they’re a professional athlete, you know, in that instance they’re just, they’re, they’re patient looking for help, and so we wanna respect that privacy as well. And they then learn that they can trust us that we’re not out to just get an autograph or just get a signature or get a ticket to the game or something like that, that we really are on their team and want the best for them. I think it’s also important to understand that you have to be flexible. You know, they may not be on time. They may have, they may be coming from another practice or another provider. They may be 15, 20, 30 minutes, you know, running behind. They may be late. I think it’s important to be flexible in understanding that they may wanna see a different provider from you that day. They may cancel because another provider that’s on their team has an opening, and that’s not personal. They just need to see that other provider that day instead of you. You also have to be flexible in that they may come in and want a completely different treatment than you had planned for that day, and you have to be able to switch gears quickly based on what they need. You also need to understand that again, the stakes are high for them, and so keeping their best interest in mind, whether that be for practice, for competition, you have to be. Aware of where they’re at and meet them where they’re at, and be able to communicate with their care team as well, what you did and why, and to be able to come up with a plan together to maximize their performance at that elite professional level. When we’re looking at the youth or high school athlete, we have several factors to keep in mind. Number one, that athlete will be at various levels in terms of their skill. A 10-year-old who plays soccer might be at an elite level with rush or real soccer locally, for instance. Or a 10-year-old may just be playing soccer for the first time and have really poor motor control, really poor strength. And so when we get a youth athlete in here, we want their parents to come with them at that first visit so that we can all work together as a team to determine where that athlete is functionally do they have significant strength deficits. Are contributing to their injury? Do they have fears and concerns about playing through a minor acre pain that they probably can continue to play through? Do we need to reassure them that it’s okay to continue to play? Or on the flip side is an athlete who’s been playing for a long time, who’s pretty tough and who knows how to work through injury, but also maybe is at risk of pushing a little too hard through that injury and injuring themselves further. There can be such a wide range of skill level and experience and expertise when it comes to the youth athlete. So we’re really working and collaborating together with that athlete, with the parents and with the coaches to determine where they are, functionally, where they wanna be in terms of their goals and what they need to do to get there. And so it’s involves a lot of communication and education with the youth athlete. High school athlete because they may have not been injured before, so they may be working through a process that’s very new to them and they may have fears, they may not quite understand how we can help them. So there it involves a lot of back and forth communication, talking, texting, emailing, explaining. We have a high school youth athlete. We had to have a couple of, probably three pretty in depth conversations with. Bad athlete’s parents, just to get them to understand the nature and severity of an injury so that that athlete didn’t go back out and injure themselves further. So it’s a big difference between the youth or high school athlete and the professional athlete in that there may be a big gap in what they understand as far as the injury process and the rehab process and the tools that we have to help them. So it involves an extensive training and communication to be able to get the results that we want to get. With that athlete, and it’s a constant reassessment communication. You know, with, when you’re dealing with youth or high school athletes, you can’t just say things. You have to make sure that they’re written down or for sure that their parents understand well and make sure that that message is getting conveyed correctly to the coaches or athletic trainers that are working with them, because that’s where the gap happens. We’ll tell an athlete one thing, and then they go to their athletic trainer or coach and tell ’em. Something slightly different just because they didn’t have the ability to communicate well or really have a good understanding of what we’re trying to communicate. Then maybe the athlete goes back and returns to competition too quickly or does something that they shouldn’t be doing in the weight room and the injury. Just either, you know, they don’t get better or things continue to get worse. And then, you know, we get that, ah, physical therapy isn’t helping. Well, that’s not necessarily the case. There was this really communication gap. So we really tried to do our job. And communicate extensively through written exercises, written instructions, written notes to coaches, texts, phone calls to various coaches and people on their team so that we don’t drop the ball and so that they continue to improve and can return to their sport.