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STEP 1: Shut up and listen
STEP 2: Embrace your mistakes STEP 3: Be consistent STEP 4: Stay Humble STEP 5: Never forget your purpose Only swing at fastballs, ignore the change-ups In baseball and softball, when you’re up to bat, you have the option of deciding whether to swing at a pitch you consider favorable and ignoring those you don’t. In our role as healthcare practitioners, we can’t just sit back and cherry pick who walks through our door in need of our expertise. With that being said, if we are thrown a curve-ball that is more difficult to handle, we owe it to our profession to deliver. This curve-ball can be in the form of a personality type, gender, age or even a difficult diagnosis that may make us feel uneasy. His name was Marcus Everyone has a story that altered the course of their career in one direction or another. Mine started with a 10-year-old we will call “Marcus”. He had suffered from chronic seizures as a toddler and required brain surgery involving removal of his frontal lobe as a treatment. I had only been a PT for a year or so and this was his first time receiving physical therapy because he had never been covered by insurance. His mom was distraught, overwhelmed and somehow full of excitement at this new opportunity for him. He was developmentally delayed. He was unable to verbally communicate or stand/walk on his own and was confined to a wheelchair. My 10-year-old mentor He and I spent 8 months together. In that time period, I truly believe he taught me more than I could ever teach him. I learned what it meant to fight for your patients and appreciate the concept of serving a cause that was bigger than myself. Without intentions of being contemptuous, I had colleagues tell me writing letters of medical necessity were fruitless and a waste of time, but I wrote them anyways. We were able to get Marcus a stander and a gait trainer. Seeing the tears of joy on his mom’s face after watching him walk for the first time still gives me chills. As our time together came to a conclusion, I was gifted with 3 pairs of socks, all being themed of different superheroes. I was only a year out of school and was considered a superhero to Marcus and his family. Little did they know, he was actually mine. You don’t have to be an expert to care I didn’t have advanced training, or a skill set that set me apart from the crowd. I did, however, have questions that I felt needed to be answered. My passion for finding answers outweighed my fear of imposter syndrome and being inadequate. I knew that with some effort of seeking guidance and resources, I could help this family in one way or another. There will be plenty of challenging circumstances and people we will encounter throughout our career. We can’t let the day to day nuisances of productivity or keeping up with notes discourage us from embracing these challenges. I wear my superhero and crazy socks daily as my reminder--you may have to find your own.
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STEP 1: Shut up and listen
STEP 2: Embrace your mistakes STEP 3: Be consistent STEP 4: Stay Humble The good ole taste of humble pie never gets old. I remember graduating from physical therapy school with my Doctorate of Physical Therapy degree. I was ready to change the world and the people in it. I started my first job and all of my patients were reportedly getting better. I had it all figured out… or at least I thought I did. It was like the feeling of mastering your grandmother’s lasagna recipe that you devoured as a kid. It wasn’t until my first weekend at one of the residency classes I was “enlightened” with this delicacy we call, humble pie. At this point in my career, I had only been practicing for 2-3 months. In retrospect, I believe my sense of confidence may have stemmed from being protected from difficult cases by my boss who had been a PT for 10 years. This residency module in particular was focused on the lumbar spine and was taught by the residency director who was a PT with 25 years of experience. I sat there with my notepad blown away by her insight to treatment of an area I had very well oversimplified. She posed questions of clinical reasoning and foundational knowledge I couldn’t seem to google search quickly enough and yet still mentioned feelings of uncertainty herself. I felt ashamed to have taken my profession for granted. I had no fancy silverware or elaborate table setup, but that was my first serving of this eminent dessert as a physical therapist. What do you mean, you don’t know? Myth: admitting you don’t know something is a sign of weakness. We are trained in academia to always have an answer. Whether a short answer or multiple choice, no question could go unanswered. We are all too familiar with the term “take an educated guess”. What impact does this have on our patients who are relying on us to lead them through their times of helplessness? I’ll never forget hearing Ann Porter Hoke flat out say the words, “that’s a good question, I don’t know.” This is a woman who was trained by the “father of orthopedic medicine” himself, James Cyriax. I was baffled!! My sense of disbelief was not in that she did not know the answer, but in that she had the audacity to admit it. I may not be the smartest fellow in the room, but I was starting to connect the dots. In the two instances provided thus far, I had the utmost admiration for both therapists and there was a lesson I learned. There is humility in admitting you don’t know something to those who have placed you on a pedestal and it’s even more courageous to display this type of wisdom consistently. Not really into pies? Too bad!!! The moment you accept you will not be perfect all of the time is the moment you will begin your growth as a person and a clinician. This journey of perfection does not exist. What works today will somehow be discredited 10 or 15 years from now and we will all have to admit that we could have been better. This does not negate our intentions nor our efforts in making a change. The humble clinician will never develop shoulder pain from a repetitive injury such as patting themselves on the back or reaching up to stroke their ego. They will instead appreciate changes that are for the good and take on this challenge we call lifelong learning. These are the clinicians that empower students and new grads that are up and coming to take the profession by the horns and help lead the way. Keep grandma proud knowing that she can trust her closely held list of recipes with you as she begins to relinquish her time in the kitchen to enjoy the harvest of the seeds she faithfully planted. |
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