Tell us about yourself. Specialties, passions, etc.

Well, I’m a Pisces… 😉  I went into PT as a second career. I was in my mid 20s when I went into school and I was interested in musculoskeletal when I started. But then I got into school and I was excited about everything else. I loved musculoskeletal, I loved cardiopulmonary, I loved neuro. The only thing I wasn’t interested in, and I was ok with that, was pediatrics. Mainly because you’re down on your knees with the children and you have to get up really fast to go chase after them when they run.

I was that person in school that was always like, “I love this” and I was so excited about everything related to PT.

My specialties?  When I started out, I found myself gravitating toward cardiopulmonary. I was in that specialty for a while. But, at the same time, I also had a deep passion for neurology, so I started to slowly transition toward neuro, and I found a position in vestibular rehabilitation. 

Why did you choose to go into PT? Why did you start? Has your why developed as you continue practicing?

Well, the why, is a long story. My mom was a nurse, so I always had an interest in the health field. I thought I wanted to go into medicine, but, I just didn’t think that medicine was really something that ALWAYS helps people the way it was intended to. There is great medicine out there that can help people, but it just wasn’t for me. I did have a personal injury (bicycle crash while training for a triathlon) where I had a quadriceps tendon tear and also, an aunt of mine suffered a stroke; both of which exposed me to physical therapy.  I can definitely say that those two instances “introduced” me to physical therapy.

Then, one day, and I know it sounds silly, I just woke up and said, “I know what I want to do with my life”. That was it. I had a dream, I woke up, and I knew. From there, I started volunteering and observing in PT and applying to schools.

To me, it was (and is) so exciting to see how people can improve and how I can be a part of that. I think of it like being an architect. An architect can look at a building they designed and say, “Wow, I had a part in building that”. I feel that I can look at a patient and say, “they’re experiencing their life more easily and fluidly, and maybe I had something to do with that.

It’s a sense of pride, of altruism. It’s a sense of paying it forward to society.  It makes me want to get out of bed in the morning.

As an educator, have you noticed any changes in how students are educated?

So, I’ll compare it to how I was educated. The way I was educated, the information was just kind of thrown at you. I was expected to digest it and throw it back with confidence and with a sense that I knew it and I had an understanding of the material.  One of the biggest differences is the amount of information wasn’t as much as it is today.

As far as being a PT, always remember that we call it PT practice because we are constantly practicing and learning.

I think students don’t realize that once they come into PT school, the way you are expected to learn is different than you did in undergrad. They might assume the material might be a little bit easier to grasp than it is. It’s the sheer amount of information to learn that is the challenge that most students have. The hard part where people get confused, is that they think it will come to them right away, but it takes time and dedication. They might have done really well in undergrad, and now they’re just not grasping the concept. Don’t get frustrated. Meet with your professors and spend the extra time learning and understanding the material.  Working together with your classmates is incredibly important in order to effectively learn the material in physical therapy school.

Previously, students were able to just spit back information, but now they are expected to understand it, apply evidence based rationale, critical thinking and clinical decision making with the information, as well. You need to take the concepts that you’ve memorized, and you have to wrap that concept around the clinical picture of the patient, or the clinical picture around the concept. You need to understand it fully in order to apply it, not just regurgitate it.

But, it’s not a matter of how much you can memorize, it’s a matter of how much you can digest and fully comprehend. Many of the concepts build on one another.

I remember with the class of 2018, when I constantly told them to “trust the process”. There’s a lot in the PT curriculum that may not seem relevant “in the moment” you are learning it, but it is all vetted by our physical therapy program and the commission on accreditation for PT Education, and it’s in there for a reason. So trust the process.

Getting back to the question at hand, I would say the main way that PT education has changed, besides the sheer amount of information that is covered in school, and that students now put so much pressure on themselves going into PT school, and they are very hard on themselves when it doesn’t come to them immediately.  As an instructor, I am here to help guide you through that process.

All I can say is, trust the process, and trust that eventually, it will all finally come together.

What qualities do you think make a successful physical therapist? What about a physical therapy student?

For student physical therapists: admit that you don’t know everything, even when you think you do (or act like you do).  I recall seeing a graph/curve on this on instagram… not very evidence based… On the x-axis is your time in the program or time working as a physical therapist, and the y-axis is how much you think you know. During your first year of school, it starts out low, then climbs high at the end of your second year, then falls back down during your third year, and slowly increases up again as you practice longer in the profession. Remain humble.

I think PTs are humbled by what they don’t know after working for a good year or two, and students should realize that. They should be taking it easier on themselves  in terms of judging themselves so harshly. This profession holds really smart people, but we do place really high expectations on ourselves. I think sometimes we can act as our own worst enemies, which can sometimes work against us. There’s that internal voice we have that tells us, “we’re not good enough”. 

I say, if you can make it into PT School, you are good enough!  It’s all going to be okay. I’m speaking from experience from teaching during a pandemic. I kept on telling my students, blindly, despite how hard it was, “everything is going to be okay”. If I’m being honest, I was worried that it might not be, but everything turned out to be okay. Those students got into the clinic for their affiliations, graduated and they are working as physical therapists now. 

As for physical therapists, if you’re taking on students or working as a CI, impart the information you have to your student and challenge them, but don’t lose sight of the amount of information you knew as a student, way back when.  At this point, you’re already thinking like a PT and have been doing that for years and it is tough to gauge what you think students should know versus what they can recall at the moment.

The student in front of you is so overwhelmed on their first day in the clinic. They may only remember who their supervisor is and where the bathroom is. Everything else is a blur. Keep that in mind whenever you’re working with students.  That is to say, you should definitely challenge them, but the same way you accommodate your patients based on their needs, do your best to try and do the same for your students.

They’re our future, and we don’t want to haze them too much, especially if they’re going to be the ones taking care of us when you’re older.

Advice for aspiring and future physical therapists? Current physical therapists?

Try to go into school with an open mind. Have introspection about yourself, reflect and grow. Try not to look at PT as just letters after your name. It’s so much more than that!  It’s such a privilege to be able to work with people and have them let you into their lives. One of the most beautiful things about this profession is helping people through their hardships and sharing the most intimate moments/challenges of their lives with you. 

These people are depending on you. Keep in mind the privilege and opportunity they’re giving you here, rather than just adding the experience to feed your own ego, where it’ll validate you as an “influencer”, or something like that.

I get so excited listening to students talk about what areas of physical therapy they want to pursue. Oftentimes they start school wanting to go into pediatrics for example, and come out doing pelvic floor health. They might want to go into outpatient orthopedics, and wind up in acute care. I like to say those individuals got infected with the “PT bug”. It’s amazing, there are so many choices they can make. Always keep that open mind.

Even if five years down the line, you feel you didn’t make the right decision of the area you work in, you can always change lanes and go into a different section.  I went into education after practicing PT for 16 years. For me, the change felt natural.  While working as a clinician, there’s always education occurring, whether with patients, colleagues or students. As physical therapists, we are always teaching others. 

The great thing about NYU is that we’re a generalist program. We don’t have specialty tracks. We create physical therapists that can enter any arena within the profession.

“A Story I’d Like To Share”

There’s a story I’d like to share. I went to this course on amputee care and management. At the end of the course they had a panel discussion, and some participants were previously in the hospital after having an amputation. One patient who had a below knee amputation asked the PTs if he could make a request. We said, “of course”. He said, “After losing a limb, it’s a really scary thing, and it’s really overwhelming to us. Our lives have changed at this point. Sometimes you guys stay with us as our therapist, but sometimes things come up, and we get it. You all deserve time off. But, if you have us on your schedule, can you stay with us and make sure we are your patients, and that you are our PTs through it all? We really depend on you, we look to you for guidance and we put all of our faith in you. If you pass us off to another PT, it’s just really overwhelming and hard to adjust to. That’s all I ask.”

I don’t think there was a single dry eye in the audience after that. I truly feel so lucky to be able to do what I do.