Where I’ve Been
Its been a while sine I’ve last blogged or written any content. The reason for this is starting my own clinic, Back in Motion Sport & Spine Physical Therapy. We are a Medicare, OON, and cash practice. I’ve been putting in some long hours getting this clinic up and running. I’m blessed to have had a solid 7 months of business since opening my doors. Needless to say, I’ve been busy growing my practice and blogging has been put aside for the time being. However, we just hired our first physical therapist which will free me up more time from patient care. Thus, you will see some content in the coming months.
What I’ve Been Learning
As a new clinic owner, I’ve elevated my business game by trying to understand marketing, sales, and persuasion. Many physical therapists spend more time on clinical education but don’t educate themselves on the business side of things. You can become a better clinician, but you’re limited on the impact you can make. No one will know of your services. For this reason, learning to market and sell your brand is going to have a much higher impact and that’s where my focus is right now.
Back To the Basics….
Aside from business, I’ve had the opportunity to educate several students as their CI but also shadow some therapists over the past few months. A few things that come to my mind. First, the basic principles od rehab are more important than ever and we need to revisit them. What I mean is having a solid understanding of anatomy, biomechanics, physiology, exercise selection, etc. Everyone is looking to learn the greatest and best techniques that work only with a few patients. But…. it is the basics that will get your patients better, not some fancy technique.
The second opportunity for improvement is a systematic way to assessing and treating your patients. Many therapists make the mistake of jumping around in their examination process and end up missing valuable information or they become biased. As a result, they get the wrong diagnosis and provide the wrong treatment. At our clinic we have a rigorous process that I’ve put together after studying many different forms of evaluation and treatment and it’s call the Gray Method (TM). It’s an eclectic approach from many different physical therapy camps. It combines manual therapy, assessing functional movement, and repeated motions to rule- in and rule-out particular conditions.
Why Your Assessment Is So Important
The assessment is such an important component to your treatment and POC for the patient. The assessment’s goal is to discern what tissue is impaired or injured (an accurate diagnosis) while the other component is to discern why the injury occurred in the first place. For instance, does the patient have a hamstring strain secondary to the mid-foot not locking up during propulsion? Does the patient have patellar tendonopathy secondary to a stiff ankle causing increased strain on the tendon? This is how you need to think as a clinician and can only be understood by applying functional biomechanics and having a solid foundation in assessment.
Going Forward…
As you can see I’ve been up to quite a bit as of late. Being a small business owner is very time consuming. But… you can expect some content from me in the coming months. With us bringing on our first therapist, I’m going to slowly start pulling myself aside from clinical care.
That said, be sure to apply the information I’ve discussed. Get out your books and get back to the basics. Also be sure to put together a template on how you assess your patients. I don’t care what system you use. Use something rather than nothing. Repeat this process over-and-over again. You’ll pick up commonalities of what is normal and not normal. Stick to it. Don’t go away from it.
