Questions asked, answers received

A friend of mine needed to interview a health care worker outside of her field so for some reason she chose me... here is how it went:

Q: What in your life lead you to your profession?

A: My ankle injury in high school led me to consider the medical field as a career path. I tried to intern with a chiropractor and an orthopedic surgeon but neither field fit. The ortho. surgeon had mentioned the great PT that he was sending them to so I looked into it a little further. I liked what I saw and ended up switching from being pre-med at one school to transferring to a pre-PT program in upstate NY. Although the "pre-PT" program did not provide a great deal of PT related work, it got me to where I needed to be: PT school. I tried other fields during my undergrad. education to make sure I was heading down the right path. I became a certified EMT, worked with athletic trainers, looked into massage therapy, but nothing seemed to fit as well as when I volunteered at various PT clinics.

Do you prefer outpatient care as opposed to inpatient care?

I think the inpatient care setting is too restricting for a PT, which serves a great purpose early in ones career. There seem to be too many protocols to follow and doctors orders to meet. In outpatient there is much more freedom and generally the patients are much more functional thus creating for many more possibilities with treatment. Overall, I hope to be involved in a sports outpatient setting as I grow more into my place in the field.

What do you love most about your job?

The big draw for me when I was deciding on the field and the one that keeps me happy every morning is the patients. PT is one of the few health care fields where you get to spend upwards of an hour with a patient in a very personal setting. To be the one that helps them reach their goals is a great feeling. Furthermore, I greatly enjoy the health aspect of it. I think so many people end up regretting the way they took care of (or didn't) their bodies earlier in life. For many people this may have been due to a lack of understanding of just how easy it can be to be healthy. I hope to spread that message and find that the field affords me with this opportunity very often.

What is you least favorite part about your job?

Documentation and the political battles that exist for PT's. There are many legislative issues that are currently out there that are vital to allowing us to treat patients properly. Currently one bill that is under consideration on a federal level would grant athletic trainers and lymphedema certified specialists the right to perform PT interventions when their education does not fully justify this privilege. There seems to be a constant battle with chiropractors for the right to perform spinal manipulations and there are overlying issues with PT practices that are owned by physicians, chiros, podiatrists, even nurse practitioners to name a few that refer to their own PT for personal profit. This brings into question many ethical issues and thus is something we as a profession are fighting against.
With the documentation aspect of the field, it is frustrating but necessary to justify to insurance companies everything we do for the patient. Often times this requires doing a great deal of research and many times under that there is a lack of it. This has branched into one of the major tenets of what PT's are trying to be a part of: Evidence-Based Practice. With the proper research we can make strides in helping our patients get better quicker and justifying why we chose the intervention that we chose. I find it a novel challenge to educate these companies and politicians that what PT's do are sincerely with the patients best interest in mind. This is something else that I love about the field I am in: PT's are often very genuine and passionate about their patients getting better. It is just the most enjoyable feeling to spend time at any of the professional activities that are held within the realm of the American Physical Therapy Association. Being around thousands of people who share this passion for patients is very exciting.

What was something you learned this year, which you did not know last
year with regards to Physical Therapy?

Every day I seem to learn more and more of the political battles that exist over this profession. It is difficult to write about one thing here as I learn every day something new that goes into this highly dynamic field. Within the main professional organization of the APTA alone there are 18 special interest sections that all focus on various aspects of the field and under those 18 there are 42 various special interest groups that get more specific. There is constant new and groundbreaking research being published and the biggest challenge of the field is keeping up with it all or limiting yourself to what is most pertinent to your practice.

What is the biggest misconception about your job?

Not many people, even most practicing PT's don't realize that the profession which is now a doctoring profession affords the PT a great deal of autonomy. This is one of the 6 main tenets of the APTA and where they see the field headed in the coming years. VISION 2020 covers autonomous practice, direct access, the doctor of PT as a recognized degree, evidence-based practice, practitioner of choice, and professionalism. As far as misconceptions go, I think practitioner of choice is the one tenet that most deals with people not understanding what a PT can do. Many within the field feel that we need to market ourselves as the Musculoskeletal specialists, possibly throwing neurological, cardiopulmonary, and even integumentary in to the mix as these are the 4 main systems of the body that we deal with. When people think toothache they think dentist, when they think of back pain they probably think chiropractor now, but this is something that we want to change for many reasons...

Believe it or not this is the short version, I can go on and on, but I'll leave it here for now... :-D hope this helps