My Vision for Healthcare

One of the major events that shaped my perspectives on healthcare happened back when I was a student during my first clinical rotation. I had been placed at a small rural hospital, which had a very low number of patients admitted when I started my journey there. Compared to the hustle and bustle of most hospital settings, it was something of an odd experience.

Most corporate physical therapy settings, whether hospital or not, operate firmly on the notion that time is money. You rush in and rush out, doing what you need in order to achieve as many billable minutes as possible with minimal to no wasted time. “Wasted time” may include things like allowing a patient to use the bathroom in the middle of a session, or lending them a listening ear when they really just need someone to talk to.

My instructor at the time wanted to make the best of the hospital’s slow spell, and recommended that I just get out there and give people the best care that they could possibly get. I could spend whatever time I felt was appropriate with people, in order to get them what they needed and ensure that they were happy. However, this also came with a warning: “Don’t get used to this. This place will be unlike anywhere else that you’ll go, and during future clinicals elsewhere you’ll get in trouble if you aren’t always maximizing your minutes and being as efficient as possible.” At the time, I didn’t really realize how true her words were.

One day, I had a visit with a woman who was expected to stay at the hospital for a few weeks. Her sudden hospitalization implied a lot of long term changes in her life, and it was taking a while for doctors to get her medically managed. I had a pretty normal physical therapy session with her and she was gradually doing better, but at the end of it all she just seemed incredibly down in the dumps. Fortunately, I was blessed with the opportunity to be able to just stick around and be present. Walking away and leaving someone in that state would feel wrong.

She confided in me that she had a lot of fears and sadness. What would life be like after the hospital? She missed her home. She missed her husband, even though he did come to visit. But most of all, she missed her dog.

I don’t have the ability to fix all the problems of the world, nobody truly does. But I do have two ears that were made for listening, and sometimes that’s what people truly need in order to find the resolve they need to get over their own hurdles and continue marching forward.

Within the white walled, sterile, hospital room was a standard dry erase board and a marker. I asked her for a few details, and scrawled out a rough doodle of her dog. The woman suddenly started to cry and I panicked, thinking that I’d messed something up terribly until she clarified that these were tears of joy. She’d been bottling up a lot of feelings, and this was something she’d needed to get off her chest.

Eventually, the woman made a great recovery (a special exemption was even made to allow her dog to visit her in her hospital room), and she got to go home as someone that I’ll never forget. I learned a lot of things during that clinical rotation related to physical therapy, but more than that, I learned a lot about people, and the role that I want to have in their lives. Every single person out there has a unique story, along with their own hurdles, beliefs, and needs. If we as healthcare providers truly want to give people the best recovery possible, then we need to treat and work with them holistically, as individuals. Not as their diagnosis, and most definitely not by their billable potential.

This is why I created Serendipity Physical Therapy and Wellness. Because I believe that when we’re free to truly treat people as people, we as healthcare providers have the potential to truly change people’s worlds for the better, and we can achieve things that would otherwise never be possible.