Episode 91: Value what we do

Leaving the last day of 2024 with a little spice. Since most of this audience is PTs, PTAs and PT(A) students, I just want to remind us to value what we do. Stand up for your skill set, educate others on the benefits and continue to advocate!

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Chapters

• 0:04 Advocating for the PT Profession
• 10:16 Maximizing PT Impact and Value

Transcript

Rachele Burriesci: 0:04

Welcome to Talking All Things Cardiopulm. I am your host, Dr. Rachele Burriesci, physical therapist and board-certified cardiopulmonary clinical specialist. This podcast is designed to discuss heart and lung conditions, treatment interventions, research, current trends, expert opinions and patient experiences. The goal is to learn, inspire and bring cardiopalm to the forefront of conversation. Thanks for joining me today, and let's get after it.

Rachele Burriesci: 0:36

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Rachele Burriesci: 1:27

Happy New Year's Eve. Here we are, last day of 2024. I might as well say it again, because I'm hoping 2025, just like, pump the brakes a little bit this year, freaking flew by Like period. End of story. Here we are. It's the last day and I forgot that it's New Year's Eve about like 10 times today. Nicki left this morning. I had a client this morning running some errands, went to Costco it was a zoo, came back, forgot it was New Year's Eve again. Everyone keeps asking what are you doing tonight? Well, we're old, so no big plans this year. Every year I say we're going to start hosting a New Year's Eve party. We did while we were in Brooklyn and it was always a fun time getting friends together and all the whole bit. But friends, family, all grown up, have kids, have all the things. It makes it a little bit harder as you get older. And we're going to enjoy our day off tomorrow because it's Wednesday. So I had a couple of things I wanted to talk about today. I was going to do the whole goals reflection thing, but I think we're just going to be a little bit spicy. I think we're going to end the year with a little spice, because I've had some spicy comments and you know I feel like we're just going to chat about it.

Rachele Burriesci: 2:56

I think we have to value what we do as PTs. Right, I'm talking to my PTs here, my PTAs, my PT students, because it's a real conversation and I feel like we're going to continue to fight for this profession. I think we have to 100% be advocates for our profession. We need to be advocates for what we do, what we can do, what we bring to the table, and sometimes it feels exhausting, like you're just having the same conversations over and over. But if you plan on staying in this field, I think you just have to keep showing up and keep doing what you're doing and keep putting your best foot forward and keep educating right Every moment you get to educate, educate and we'll dig into it a little bit. But I also think we need to value what we do, and I think I'm talking more from an acute care perspective because I'm not in the outpatient setting anymore, so I don't always hear the vibe of the outpatient PTs, but there are a lot of, and I've had this conversation before. This is probably not the first time I've said this on this podcast and it definitely won't be the last, because I truly believe in what we do. I know that the research supports physical therapy across settings, like there is so much value in what we bring and I think we just have to value it ourselves too and not diminish what we do.

Rachele Burriesci: 4:34

And I'm saying this from maybe a negative perspective, but I sometimes see that as PTs, we might say, oh, that's not skilled, oh, that's not for this setting, oh, we don't do that. I just really want to caution you. I want to caution you for downing what we do as a profession and downing the skill, because when you say no and you say that's not for me and that's not for us and that's not for here, it starts to go away. And I fear that, as we say, this isn't a skilled fill in the blank, we just start losing the essence of what we do, and it's a fear for me. It almost puts you in the category of fulfilling your stereotypes, like in the acute care setting. The stereotype is that you're mobilizing and just getting patients to the chair, just walking. That's the stereotype. I don't agree with it. I see it from time to time. But we have so much more value Use your skills, educate others on your skills, show up for you, show up for your patients, show up for your profession, show your skill and I'm gonna warn you, it's exhausting. It really is. Sometimes you just want the value to be felt without having to explain the value or show the value or prove the value. But we're still in a position where we have to do that and I just think, as a profession, we have to continue to show up for ourselves and continue to show up for our patients. We tend to be the best advocates for patients. We also need to be the best advocates for PT. We do Period.

Rachele Burriesci: 6:27

I actually had a nurse come up to me the other day very friendly, right, there's no negative connotation to this, although some of the conversation required some education. She asked if a certain person was going to have PT that day and wasn't, you know, not a person that was on my list. But I stopped, checked to see if they even had a PT consultant and they didn't. And she's like yeah, I really think they need. You Love to hear that. Tell me more. Person was on a lot of oxygen requires up titration with any kind of movement, but she moves well, from my understanding. I know nothing about this person. This is just conversation. And then, as she was saying it, I actually said I think that sounds really appropriate. There's a lot of things we can do to help this person, have the physician place a consult. And then, as she was kind of asking me for help, she kind of backtracked and said well, maybe that's really an RT thing, not a PT thing, and I would have to disagree.

Rachele Burriesci: 7:36

And I think in the acute care setting sometimes we're always prioritizing and that's you have to right. When you're in a bigger institution and there's increased productivity requirements or just an increased caseload or increased number of patients that need to be seen per number of PTs available, I think we do have to do a good job educating on what's appropriate and what's not appropriate. But I think sometimes the patients that can move well but have other limitations might get the terms. They're at their baseline. They mobilize fine. They mobilize fine. Maybe they don't need us. And I just want to remind us as a profession that we can make a lot of impact for patients and I understand that we have to prioritize, trust me, you know I'm I'm in this too, but I also want to make sure that we're using our skill and helping the people that need help. Someone with high oxygen requirements needs that help. It might be more of a endurance aspect, it might be more of a gas exchange limitation, it might be more of a ventilation problem. But we have the skills to help with that. And even if it's just one session education handoff to maybe something like pulmonary rehab, being that voice to help put them in the right direction is so powerful and I just don't want to lose that.

Rachele Burriesci: 9:18

I had another client, one of my mobile clients, doing so much better since we started adding breathing exercises and doing respiratory muscle training and she's doing great. She's got a lot more room for improvement but her symptoms are pretty much gone Short of breath and shortness of breath is gone. She has more ability to take an improved breath size. We have improvement on our chest measurements. She's actually able to sequence her breathing, activate her diaphragm. She's got good excursion now. She had a lot of limitation with chest wall mobility. Right side is mobilizing equally with symmetry and good timing like significant differences. And she actually had a follow up with her, her pulmonary doctor who's new right. So she's just newly seeing a pulmonologist because she had shortness of breath.

Rachele Burriesci: 10:16

We later started working together after that and she had mentioned that she's doing PT and she's doing breathing exercises and she feels that she's made a lot of gains. And she relayed to me that the physician scoffed at the breathing exercises as being the improvement piece. And that's just frustrating, right. It's frustrating for the patient, who is like doing what she has to do to improve and is actually committed to her home exercise program and has made tremendous gains. And it's frustrating as a PT who is educating and looking at the whole picture and not just, you know, focusing on one piece. It's education. Right, this person might need more education and maybe even educating won't help, but we still have to keep pushing forward, because if we don't, those things are just going to keep getting pulled away.

Rachele Burriesci: 11:29

On your value. Show up for your patients, do the best for them, advocate for them, look at the whole picture, don't just get tunnel visioned. And please, please, please, use your skill, use your skill set, use the tools in your toolbox. Do what you need to do to help the patient so that the value shows itself. Right, what you put in and what you get out happens because of your knowledge, your skill base, your ability to make an impact. Don't be afraid to make an impact and I'm going to leave you with that Happy New Year's. I hope you had a wonderful 2024. I hope you have an even better 2025. Whatever you have to do, get after it.