October 3 2024
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Welcome to the True Sports Physical Therapy Podcast with your host, Dr. Yoni Rosenblatt. In this Milestone 100 episode, Dr. Rosenblatt goes solo to answer the most frequently asked questions he receives from fellow physical therapists. Today, Dr. Rosenblatt dives deep into practical advice, clinical insights, and strategies that work for you.PTs can apply to their practice. Whether you're new to the field or a seasoned professional, this episode provides valuable takeaways directly from Dr. Rosenblatt's wealth of experience. Tune in to celebrate the special episode of the True Sports PT podcast and gain actionable knowledge to enhance your PT practice.Let's jump right in and welcome to the True Sports Physical Therapy Podcast. Thank you guys so much for listening. This pod is going to be a little bit different. Uh, I've done this a couple of times, got pretty good feedback on it. So I figured I would give it another go. It's going to be all me all the time.Um, and we're just going to be covering topics that I get asked so much about. Um, not so much clinical, but more so professionally speaking, I just did a job fair recently, um, at my alma mater and I got barraged with the same questions over and over and over, and I'm thinking in my head, like, This must be what's burning in the minds of either someone who's looking for a new job.Um, and they ask these questions all the time to potential employers or new graduates as you come out, you're kind of in the same boat. You're looking for the right way to start your career. These are going to be burning questions that are on your mind. It's going to be how I answer them and handle them inside of that job fair.So here we go. It's going to be me kind of running down those questions, giving you my answers. And then as always, super open to feedback. Want to hear what you thought about this solo pod style. I'm happy to cover more topics like this. I'm also going to jump back into getting some of the nations, really the world's, um, greatest PTs on here to discuss all things, sports medicine, sports rehab, as well as the pro the professional side or the business side of outpatient sports, physical therapy.So here we go. One of the major questions that I get all the time when someone's looking at true sports is what type of mentorship or continuing ed opportunities do you provide to new graduates? And the truth is, this should be something you're asking whether you're a new graduate or not. We are always looking for people that want to get better at what it is that we do.I think that's a defining characteristic of true sports. A potential employee. So I love getting this question and here, here are the answers that we have. So number one, we have our in house courses. You've heard me ramble on and on about our ACL masterclass from table to turf. It is the best ACL course that is out there on the market.We offer that in house to all of our physical therapists for free at no cost. You get 7. 5 continuing ed units for it. Which is a great bonus, but it's super unique in that it is real world ACL rehab. So long gone are the textbooks and the protocols, but rather it's really functional, functionally milestone based.So we know that you have to be able to do, um, a bilateral squat before you move to single leg squat, you have to move to a tap down before you can start thinking about plyometrics, what type of. strength metrics are we looking for before we say, Hey, you're ready to begin plyometrics. What kind of strength or rate of force development are we looking for before you can return to run?And then of course, all the way to return to sport. We discuss use of, uh, force play technology of 10 deck utilization and all things in between. We also. Coach you on how we coach our athletes in house at true sports. So this is not an infomercial on that course, but that is one of the things that we provide towards that continuing ed opportunities in house.We also have an overhead athlete course coming out, which was designed by a formal former professional baseball player who is now an elite sports physical therapist. And he walks you through how he approaches the shoulder, how he approaches the overhead athlete, uh, different pathology. Presentations like shoulder impingement, biceps tendonitis, labral tears, UCL disruptions.What's the difference between, um, a Tommy John repair, uh, versus an internal brace, uh, repair or reconstruction. Um, and we walk through all of those in terms of timelines, but also similar to the ACL course. How do we actually get these athletes? back and better than ever. So you'll get that. We have a low back pain in the rotational athlete population.This shows up a ton in baseball. Um, both hitters and pitchers, ton in quarterbacks. into a tremendous amount in our, um, unbelievable population of lacrosse athletes, fastest growing sport in America. So we walk through, um, also you'll hear from former professional semi pro lacrosse players, um, how they approach this.and how they rehab it all the way from, Hey, I can't move at all to how do I return to shooting or pitching or throwing? Um, and we walk you all the way through that. So that's three in house courses that we got more coming, um, which, which we're obviously really excited about. So we give those to every single therapist and they get those courses before they even start, as soon as you agree to join the true sports team, you get that information.We also give you 2, 000 per year towards any sports continuing education that you want to take. So between all of those resources, you're going to be well covered to meet your, um, minimum of 30 hours of continuing ed every two years. But it's, it's really specific to sports rehab. Um, and that's one of the great offerings.that we offer you. I encourage you to ask other employers, potential employers, what it is that they do. But then even more than that, we do monthly in services led by your clinic director. So that's small group learning. You'll do, um, a chart review. You'll do a case study. Sometimes it's presented by our staff physical therapist.We have a number of staff PTs that are, um, have specialty in given niches. For instance, Dr. Mary Miller is one of the foremost running experts. She'll do a running breakdown. We use dorsal view, which is a marker list, uh, movement capture system. And we're able to actually put, put this system on our athletes and having to go out and run.Um, and it'll give us all types of data. She walks all of our team through how she uses it, um, and how she approaches the runner. I think that's a population that Um, I have definitely struggled with in the past. Um, and we really make it as easily digestible as possible. We also have a once a month optional journal club, and that's led by Dr.race Hauser out of the West coast in Oregon. Um, he provides us with a given. Um, journal article, we can digest that we can review, we can hit him with questions prior and then he leads a discussion once a month. So there's so many opportunities for continuing ed inside of our roof. But also, like I said, we give you the ability to take any course you want nationally.That was my answer to the types of mentorship that we provide. Uh, another question I get is how do you support new hires in transitioning from either just academic knowledge or we get a lot of Staff PTs, um, that come from other settings. And so either they're newer to the sports world. It's just something that they've always had a passion about, or they've been working in your standard gen pop, uh, population or setting and treating the athlete can be daunting and totally new to them.So what we've done, um, our outstanding COO, a guy named Dr. Tim stone. Outline what we used to call rookie of the year, but now we call it just our initial 12 month onboarding program that walks you through step by step. And you will walk through this process. Once you join true sports with your clinic director, who is a seasoned vet, who's been with true sports for some time, how do you write your notes?How do you bill your notes properly? We have a billing specialist on staff. Who's a physical therapist and can tell you how to ethically bill and maximize your billing. I think this is an important note to all you PTs out there that are ripping through notes, um, and may have some questions about how to bill.You should have a billing mentor, um, on your side that can say, here's how you maximize your billing. So you can get justly paid for the outstanding services and care that you're providing to your patients. If you're in a network provider. So we walk you through that in those 12 months, we look at how to schedule your patients.How often do you want to see them? When do you want to see them? How do you create buy in with your patients? This is a conversation I just had at one of our clinics talking about. We have a lot of patients that would benefit from three times a week from four times a week. Sometimes if they're on their college's insurance or they're not worried about college insurance, you better believe you're going to get better.The more often you come in, how do you create that buy in? With your patient with the athlete, how do you have that conversation that it's all about coaching the therapist? We do that within our initial 12 month onboarding program. We also set out very specific productivity guidelines. So how quickly do we want you to ramp up?To a full caseload. What is a full caseload? Um, and how do you manage that? How do you give great care? Um, with us at true sports, we're one on one every single time for 45 minutes, not every clinic is like that. And I totally encourage you when you're looking at a job, you've got to spend time inside the clinic.I remember when I was interviewing for different positions at different facilities, I would make it a point to spend a day, maybe two days shadowing a P. T. To actually see how they're scheduling their patients. It's not enough to just hear that. Well, we average about 40 minutes of one on one time. I want to see that in operation too often.Clinics are saying we average this or we average that. But Does that really help you at 7 p. m. when 2 patients walk in at 7 p. m. or 1 at 7 and 1 at 7. 15 and they're expecting you to just stay late? You want to get a feel for how it's actually happening? Look in their documentation charts. Like, look to see how they're scheduling patients, if they're double booking, if there's overlap, whether there's a tech that's doing a lot of the rehab.That's one thing that, that I can say we've been obsessed with at true sports is veering away from the idea of handing the patient off to a tech, which sometimes can even just be a high schooler. That's like checking off their exercises. We try like hell to avoid that. Um, maybe, maybe that's not so important to you, but you want to know that information before you go in.So, like I said, we hit those productivity standards of how we're going to ramp you up. Um, and then. Work life balance is also discussed in this 12 month onboarding. I think this is really interesting because I get this question. We're going to come back to it a little bit later of I got a question from, uh, uh, third year student who was saying, how do you manage your, uh, work life balance with your clinicians?That always makes me kind of raise my eyebrows when I'm, when I get a question like that, cause I'm thinking, well, You know, is this person more focused on how early can I get out on a Friday or how many days of PTO, um, do I have to kind of get out early? We give a 10 days PTO at true sports to start. And that escalates the longer you stay.Uh, we also give some flexibility in your schedule. Um, and that's one of the ways we work with work life balance. The other thing I look at is to kind of reframe that. What is it that is so challenging with work life? We're going to get into this when we talk about burnout, but we want to make sure that the therapist is doing what they love.Obviously, if you're working at true sports, or if you're working in a sports clinic, you love treating athletes, not just any athlete, but. Potentially an athlete in a given niche and a given specialty. I love treating baseball players or lacrosse players or football players, whatever it is, we want to look at how we maximize that time in work so that work does not feel necessarily so draining.If you are treating exactly who you want to treat in the S in the setting that you want to treat in, all of a sudden, this idea of work life balance becomes far less of an issue because. Uh, working at work, someone who loves work, right? Never worked a day in their life. So we want to approach it from that standpoint to make sure that the people you're treating in house is exactly who you want to be treating.All of this is laid out in that 12 month onboarding program. I think that really. Is a solid answer to how we support new hires. We always say that once you kind of come into the true sports family and put a true sports Jersey on, we are dying to make you succeed, to help you succeed. And so no longer is it kind of management overlooking the employee and saying, you have to do this.You have to do that. How do we work together? How do we. Create a collective where we're all pulling in the same direction. Um, that's the way we love to support our hires at true sports physical therapy. Hey guys, quick pause and a quick shout out to this new masterclass that we just launched here at true sports physical therapy, myself and Dr.Tim stone put together a masterclass of ACL rehab, and we call it from table. To turf and the reason we call it that is because it's going to teach you exactly how to get your athlete all the way from post op day one with the nitty gritty of regaining all of that range of motion with the tips and the tricks that we use here at True Sports Physiotherapy that gets our athletes better, faster and stronger and that's early and then how do you progress that athlete all the way onto the field with a ball in their foot or stick in their hand or whatever their sport is and teach them How to accelerate, how to decel, how to change direction, all the mechanics that go in there, what drills do we use to get our athletes exactly where they need to be back on the field and even better than before injury.And I want you to sign up for that class. Now you can find it on our website. You can shoot us a direct. Message and just say, Hey, send me the course it's right now on sale. So make sure you sign up now. It is fully accredited to get you all of your continuing education hours, sign up for the true sports masterclass ACL from table to turf.Thanks, guys. Another question I got is what is the patient population like a true sports? What types of injuries or conditions are most commonly treated? It's a good question. It's easy to say. Yeah, we treat athletes. Maybe push a little bit harder of saying how many A. C. L. S. If you love A. C. L. S. How many A.C. L. S. Do you see a day if you love the overhead athlete or you love treating shoulders? How many shoulder patients am I going to see in a given day? And if, um, how do I, how do I, are you going to help me generate shoulder referrals, let's say, and we, we have an idea of how exactly to do that. I think that question should be finer, you know, finer tuned or more finely tuned.Um, if you come into true sports, we, it's in our name, we love treating athletes. When I go in and talk to a referral source and we'll get into referral sources in a little bit, My common, um, theme or sentence that I deliver to them is do not send me everyone, send me your athletic population, send me someone who is dying to get back to their given activity, or maybe isn't performing to the level they want to perform.That's who I want to treat. I don't want to treat grandmas and grandpas. No offense to grandmas and grandpas. It's just not what gets me out of bed in the morning. And I would say the same thing for our entire staff. Don't get me wrong. You're gonna see some gen pop if you walk into a true sports clinic.Standardly, that gen pop, our people, general population, are going People who are dying to get back to a given activity, or they have tried therapy elsewhere. And because they're maybe they're going to, um, a mill type clinic, the therapist either doesn't have the expertise to help them with their given presentation.Maybe it's a little more complex. Maybe it's multifactorial, or they don't have the setup. They don't have the time to spend with a patient. So you want to inquire how often are you Are you expecting me to treat a patient? Um, for us, like I said, it's one on one for 45 minutes. So if you come into true sports, you're going to see athletes prep school to pros.I had one therapist tell me that they look at the professional athlete, NFL, NBA, MLB, et cetera, um, as lingerie. It's not for every day. And that's not what keeps the lights on by and large. Um, really it's, The athletic individuals. So we see a ton of prep school athletes. I mean, from two o'clock until eight o'clock at night, we are chock full of high school and college athletes during the summer.All of those athletes that went away to college to play ball, they come back and they are in for five days a week at any given hour because their schedule becomes far more flexible. And that's what you're going to see. And then you'll also see, like I said, those more difficult And Gen pop presentations.Maybe it's vestibular in nature. Maybe it's concussion based. Um, and they're not necessarily athletic, but because of our expertise, like in that bullseye to be able to treat the elite level athlete, that expertise is easily, um, relatable to more difficult populations. And we have the time to do it. That's what you're going to find if you come into true sports.Another one I get is to describe a typical day, um, at true sports as a physical therapist. And what you're going to find is we really give you a lot of the flexibility to just make your numbers, meaning to meet your productivity levels. Um, we expect every therapist to be about 85 percent full. That's where we want you.And if you want to shift your hours. to more nighttime because you want to see either more high school athletes or that's just when your population is available. We give you the ability to do that. So that shift starts at about 10 a. m. And runs until 7 45 p. m. And then we also have a shift that will start at seven a.m. And go till 3 15 p. m. Those are usually the hours that therapists are working. Um, we also have therapists treat one Saturday a month. Usually that's from seven or eight a. m. until about noon or 12 15. But again, super flexible. It doesn't matter to me what your hours are if you're meeting your productivity standards.So I like to give that power to the therapist. Um, and I think that also Traces back to work life balance. So if you need to get out early on a given day and you can fill your schedule early in the morning, have added, if you want to, if you want to front load your schedule, um, and, and see a whole bunch of patients Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, um, have at it, it doesn't matter to me as long as you're seeing a, the patients you want to treat and be kind of meeting those productivity standards.Um, I think it's a totally worthwhile question to ask, but again, I could say anything. You gotta get your butt in there and see how the clinic is actually working and also who you are reporting to. What is your clinic director like? What are the other clinicians like? What is their, um, interaction with the front desk?Um, I think those are, those are all big pieces that I would encourage. Everyone listening to go out and do, um, and and you're gonna learn a ton by doing that. Um, the next question I got was, how do you balance high level performance therapy with rehab for the non athlete? Um, and I think that's a really nuanced question because first of all, it shows me that you don't expect to be treating NFL athletes from sun up to sundown.Um, and so what happens when a tougher case Walks in, let's say a geriatric, um, patient walks in and you're looking to provide care to them. How do you manage that? And I'll tell you what I, what I told the group was so much of what we do, what makes an outstanding clinician is being able to meet your patient where they are, and then understand their goals and every single time figuring out a way to challenge them intelligently.So when you're prescribing your straight leg raises, let's say it's early post stop total knee replacement. Um, so it's usually someone a little bit older. Are you giving them enough reps sets resistance to challenge them? If you don't challenge them, we can't expect to get granular their, their muscle. To adapt, you have to increase the challenge to that muscle.Um, and so figuring out how to do that, that's the best way to kind of dance between, because it's the same ethos. It's the same idea. You want to challenge the NFL athlete with a given box jump height. Well, the next patient, they might be a total knee replacement, but you have to challenge them just the same.It's just with via a different mechanism. Um, and just think about the different levers that you can pull to challenge that population. Um, okay. What is the company culture like? And how does the team collaborate across different clinics? So again, a great question because it shows that your work life is something that you want to take really seriously.And you want to figure out how do you make work life feel like it is? Your work life feel like less work. One way to do that is having a very strong clinic culture. So it's an awesome question. The way we do it a true sports is we have monthly all team all hands on deck meetings. And that means not just the therapist, but the therapist and the admin will get together, block off a patient treatment time and talk through, um, Some challenges perhaps that they're facing.It's really important. We always do highs and lows. Um, what are the highs of the clinic? What are some successes? What are some wins? How do we double down on those? What are some lows or some missed opportunities and how do you make them better and to keep a running tab of those? So that happens once a month.We have found that that has really increased our better. Interclinic culture. Um, and the ability for everyone to understand that we're pulling in the same direction in that meeting along with the culture. We wanted to be always a learning environment. And so half of that meeting is going to be clinical pearls.Maybe it's a case study. Um, maybe it's a journal. Um, so that we always add some type of clinical education on how we do it. And by pulling the admin in while they might not care about how we progress from a double leg squat to apply metric activity, they have so much to teach us about what they're seeing at the front desk and what patients are experiencing and saying all of that happens at a minimum.Once a month and really helps with the culture. You're also going to have monthly one on ones with your clinic director so that the clinic director can understand where the therapist is. What are the goals of the physical therapist? Um, how do we make their life ideal both in work and potentially out of work?And so that's always an ongoing conversation. And then we've learned this now. As transparently as I can be, um, we have definitely swung and missed at this at times of trying to figure out how do we get a cohesive unit without making that unit in the clinic feel like, God, it's so burdensome. I got to go to another happy hour and I just want to go home and put my feet up or I got to go to this other team meeting.And so what we've begun to do since we've gotten so big, we've got 15 clinics now across three states is we've broken these Clinics up into different regions. And so we'll get regions that are geographically pretty cohesive. They all report to the same regional director twice a year. Those groups are going to get together just as a region and kind of talk through similar problems and really work through the same workflow that I discussed that you'll have in your monthly team meetings, highs, lows, um, clinical education, talking about some tougher cases, talking about things that can improve across the entire region, also business wise.Marketing efforts, what referral sources are working out? What aren't, who do we need to attack and who do we need to foster and maybe what's not worth our time, um, and working through that. So we do that regionally and then we have full team meetings. You're talking about 55, 60 physical therapists, 20, 25 admin, all getting together, we do that twice a year.Uh, we'll do a state of the clinic. or the state of the company where we'll talk about all things we're working on company wide, try to give a vision and a path for where we want to take this whole thing. And we try to do that at a minimum two times a year. That's been a lot of fun and created a lot of buy in.Um, and so that's the way we approach the culture within our clinics. Um, and it's gone pretty well. The other thing we do, like I said before, as as an entire team is these monthly journal clubs, and that's Only the clinical staff, but it's a great opportunity for everyone to get together and kind of spit ball and everyone leaves those calls with.Vigor with renewed intent and maybe some new clinical ideas of, Hey, how do I get better today? Those are all ways in which we attacked the culture and try to elevate the culture across the entire true sports team. So definitely a little insight in maybe where we let that ball slip, or we got too, too big, too fast.Um, but how we've begun to break this down by no means, obviously, are we perfect, but we're always trying to learn. Um, and that growth mindset is something that I'm always looking for, um, in future true sports members. So if that's you hit me with a dm to apply, but also with with us on the leadership side to know that, hey, this is working well, or I made a mistake here.All good things to kind of keep in mind. Okay. How do you integrate the latest research and innovations into your daily practice? So, um, also an interesting question because I think there's so much information out there. I always go back to when I first came out of graduate school, which was 15, 16 years ago, it was impossible to find.Um, it was, I mean, you're checking books out of the library and try to figure out like, how do I become a high level sports PT now with social media? It's so easy. And the flip side is also true in that there is a lot of trash out there on social media. So, um, I think now it's become less, you got to be really good at finding information.Now you got to be really good at finding and discerning and discerning. Good information. Um, being able to educate our team on what is good, what we want to wrap our arms around and what is not, um, I think has been a challenge, but something we're always working on. That's one great way where we're trying to figure out what is the technology that we want to incorporate clinic wide.What are the recovery tools that we want to incorporate clinic wide? What is I wash? Um, what? What isn't so effective? And maybe Um, some clinics are using them or there's some, there's some like Instagram fad that we have tried to vet and we don't see the stickiness of it or the purpose of it. Um, and trying to kind of meet those out, getting good at that is the way that we try to, Keep up with the latest research and innovations and put them into our daily practice.All right. What is the potential for career advancement within the company? I love getting this question from potential hires. Um, I think it shows that you are forward thinking that this is far more than a job and more so a career for you. Um, and We at true sports relish the opportunity to provide you with opportunities for career advancement.One way we've done this is create different ladders up, which you can grow. So we have our, our clinical ladders and our clinical ladders are as a way for a physical therapist to join us, become a staff PT level one, and then graduate to a staff PT level two. Now, how do you do that? How do you graduate? Um, from staff 81 to 2, number one, you have to understand that is not a requisite, but if you're interested in growth, which comes with more responsibility and then commensurately comes with increased compensation, um, that would include things like leading, marketing opportunities, leading an in service at one of these meetings, these opportunities, um, creating new referral sources, new lines of business.Um, those are all ways in which you can graduate to a level to taking on a student, becoming a clinical instructor, C. I. Number one in the short term, it is an outstanding way at true sports to increase your own comp, your own take home because we bonus you on patients that are seen by your student. But also it's when you're teaching, man, it keeps you on your toes.When I have students, I've never been a better PT than when I know I have to prepare not just to treat the patient, but to treat the patient and teach the student. That's another way that you can grow from staff PT one to staff PT. T two. We also, of course, had the ability to advance in management. So if we're opening a new clinic, we love and I think, I think almost every time that we have elevated someone from a physical therapist, a staff pt to a clinic director, it's been in house.And so that's another way where now you can grow. Now you're managing the clinic and you're you're Really, comp structure totally changes. Now you're responsible, not just fulfilling your schedule, but fulfilling everyone else's schedule. So that means understanding, understanding marketing, understanding, um, how to manage a budget.What is your marketing budget? What is your supply budget? Um, what is your startup costs? How do you, and we coach you and work you all the way through that. And we have handbooks on exactly how to do that. So that when you become a clinic director, We're able to hand you and walk you through a clinic director's guide to know what your expectations are how to do everything it is that we're asking you to do And that is led by your regional director.Your regional director is someone who previously held your position. They were a clinic director It's the same thing when we bring on a staff bt that your clinic director Is working one step down and then we also like to have skip meetings where the person above You The regional director is a meeting with the clinic director.So that means ceo ceo. They're working with you as a clinic director and skipping the middleman of the regional director and the regional director will meet with the staff P. T. Skipping the clinic director so that we have great cross pollination. Um, those are some of the ways in which you can see career advancement within true sports.Those are the clinical roles. Mhm. Then we created something called the non clinical roles. Um, and that are things like, um, in charge of our clinical education. So setting up contracts and affiliations with universities across the country, um, setting up interviewing students, potential students to join true sports, to do their affiliations and their rotations.Um, that's, that's one way to do it. We have another one called our con ed director, our con ed director. Um, is the focal point that has created our awesome continuing education offering. So that's the ACL course. I mentioned overhead athlete, low back pain in the rotational athlete. Um, and then we even have the ability.Those who are creating those courses are incentivized to create the course. So you have the kind of director who's overseeing it kind of setting up the filming, setting up our in person courses which are about to launch starting in Oregon. So look out for that. That's gonna be our A. C. L. Masterclass. Um, so we have the teachers and the directors.These are all within what we call the non clinical roles. It doesn't have to do with treating. Um, and then we have a billing specialist. I mentioned before a therapist that has grown and really loves shockingly and understands, um, And has a passion for billing ethically and efficiently and effectively.How do we get reimbursed for what we're doing? So it's just another way to grow. And then we have individual sport directors. So, um, now he's a regional director, but we had a therapist be our director of lacrosse operations and our specific outreaches to lacrosse teams. And we have for soccer teams and for baseball teams, whatever your niche is, it's another way to become director of a given offering.Um, and just give our. Team a true sports multiple ways to grow. Here's a mistake. We initially made was the only way to grow within true sports is either treat more or take over clinic and be a clinic director. And eventually, I mean, you put 11 clinics in one state in a state like Maryland eventually run out of geographics.Like, where else do I want to open a clinic? And that's why we grew out of state. But also we We had to come up with other ways to incentivize and encourage growth. I think so many PTs because of the arduous past path it takes to become a DPT, these are people that love growth and love to be challenged.Um, we're always trying to come up with ways to do that. Through sports, physical therapy is growing like wildfire. We've had 14 locations soon to be more. We are throughout the state of Maryland. We're in Pennsylvania, in Lebanon, in York, Pennsylvania, as well as in Delaware, in Newark and Wilmington, Delaware, like I said, so many more practices to come and we always need outstanding sports, physical therapists.Our treatment style is unique. We are one on one with your athlete for 45 minutes, every single session, you do the entire treatment, you do the entire evaluation, and they are in state of the art facilities where you have room to run, throw and jump, and really get your athlete all the way back to on the field and better and stronger than they were.We also have outstanding salaries, comp structures, bonus abilities, 401ks. As well as a very strong continuing education offering, including in house continuing education. And we're looking for you. Now is the time as we are growing like crazy, just shoot your resume over to Yoni Y O N I at True Sports PT, or shoot us a DM.And we will hit you back. We will get you in for our unique tried and true interview process and really make a determination. That this is the right place for you to grow your career and get your athletes better than ever. We can't wait to hear from you. Um, okay. What tools, technologies, and techniques do you use to stay at the cutting edge of sports rehab?So, we brought force plates into some of our clinics. That is a whole Pandora's box to understand how to use force plates, when to use them, how to train with them, that it's far more than just testing, but you can use them for real time information and rehab. That's one thing that we've done. And we're going to do more of the other thing we do is the use of Tindex.And that has been awesome. I had an ACL patient, um, today he was ACL, MCL, Lateral meniscus repair. Um, and he's three and a half weeks post op and he's non weight bearing for another three weeks or so, two and a half weeks and counting down the days. And so hooking them up to a TINDEC and doing something called repeaters on a TINDEC.is going to measure your force output, and you can set it up very easily for a knee extension, having them hold those positions. It's awesome for tendon health. It gives them real time data of how much force they are producing, um, has been. Awesome. In this guy's rehab process, I totally encourage everyone to check out Tindec, T I N D E Q, um, to look at ways to operationalize that.The reason I shout them out is because it is so affordable. I think it's like a hundred, 150 bucks for a given Tindec unit. And. The sky is the limit with what you can do for it. That's what that's another, um, newer technology that we incorporate. And then, of course, we've got grass and tools all over the place.We encourage our therapists to become dry needling certified in the state of Maryland. Um, it takes two years of treating before you're able to be certified to do that. But we have a very specific, um, half to becoming dry needling certified. Um, so yeah. We're all of our therapists who are eligible to become needle needle certified do needle for the most part.I think there are a few outliers And I certainly hope they become certified shortly Um, and then all of our clinics have blood flow restriction Um cuffs how to use that check out our most recent pod Um on how to use blood flow restriction when to use it and how to use it Um, and then we're starting to put in Different recovery tools in all of our clinics.So that would be cold compression. We use a company called Proventus. Check them out. They have the ability to go from heat to cold, um, back and forth with one unit and no lag time in between as well as compressive in nature. So check them out. Um, but we're also using, um, Your norma tech boots were also using game readies, and we're setting up different stations throughout all of our clinics.So those are some of the technologies that we're currently working through. We always want to be at the forefront while being leery of the fads. And so just making sure you have a good vetting process. But that's my answer to the ways we're using tools, technologies and techniques. Okay, how do you approach work life balance?I've already spoken your face off about this thing. Um, one thing that I do want to highlight is what we call our shared risk model. And so that's our compensation model where we guarantee you a certain amount of money and then over a given level of productivity, your bonus immediately in your next paycheck, if you went above and beyond that, and then all, all of that structure exists below.100 percent full. So what I was really intent on doing with this structure was making sure that it, the goal is totally attainable. So as soon as you treat over 85 percent productivity, you are making more than your base salary. And the reason I bring that up. In in the work life balance section is because I kind of leave that to the therapist and part of your onboarding with your clinic director is having the conversation.What do I want to do with my 40 hour work week? What do I want to do? I want a 50 hour work week or 60 hour work week. Um, What does that look like? But if you don't, if that is not of major interest to you, making sure that that communication that you have the flexibility with your schedule to work as much as you want to, um, given a given basement or productivity, um, expectation is super important.And I think that's an awesome way that we've worked around or Or try to be cognizant and mindful of our work life balance of our therapists and to decrease burnout, because I think that's something that's really important. Okay. Um, are there opportunities for involvement in computer in community outreach or sports events through true sports?There is probably not a weekend in which true sports is. Not doing something out on a field, whether it be ACL prevention, whether it be proper warmups or cool downs or activation techniques, or a question answer with parents. I just went up to Delaware to one of our outstanding partners, um, called the tightest human performance academy.Um, check those guys out. Cause they are at the cutting edge of strength and conditioning specifically in the baseball realm. And just having the conversation with a room full of parents, I think there were like 200 families there of. What is sports physical therapy? What is difference between sports physical therapy and your standard physical therapy?And so much of it is not being so reactive, but really trying to be forward thinking, preventative in nature, that our skillset as sports PTs is so much more than. Being reactive and far more proactive. We know what types of movement deficits or we should know can can lead you to injury or put you at a higher risk for injury.Let's get those athletes in and kind of get in front of it. Um, Really perfect those moving patterns. Number one, it's going to decrease injury or at least mitigate some of the injury. Number two, it's going to enhance performance. Those are some of the conversations we had at Titus and it's just flipping that model, that concept that you have to wait until you get hurt.to go into sports PT. No, no, no. We're going to be forward thinking we're going to be proactive. Um, so that's just one example of community involvements. Now we work very closely, um, with the baseball warehouse, which is a massive, um, travel league outfit, uh, for, for baseball and ages all the way from, from youth to, to prep in college.doing in services there. We're constantly doing stuff there, but also trying to expand where we think these patients are gonna be coming from. So when I started true sports in 2014, I started in Baltimore City. Um, and very rapidly, I learned that physicians Are owned primarily by hospital systems and those hospital systems are dying to keep their patients.The last thing they want is to have someone shoot out and go to true sports. And so I really had to cast a wider net. And so you could find us even now doing workshops. Everywhere from on a baseball field, um, under or in coordination with an athletic trainer to working in a private gym with a strength coach to I've done yoga workshops at Lululemon.I did that for the first like five or six years of true sports and the amount of referrals that come out of that. You got to think when you think marketing. Or community involvement and outreach is you got to increase that span to whom you're marketing to and to who you're involving yourself with.Those are all athletes. Everyone that walks into an Under Armour, a Nike, a Lulu, they're all active, active individuals. We did things in house with Under Armour. We've gone to workshops. We have a massive financial firm. Um, called brown advisory down in Baltimore. We work with their run group. We'll do ergonomic assessments.We are constantly in the community. That was my answer to if there are any opportunities. I think we have too many opportunities. So, um, just being strategic there. Okay. What are the key qualities? This is a good one. What are the key qualities you look for in a new physical therapist? Beyond clinical skills.Number one, affability. How much can you get that patient to love you? How quickly can you get your coworkers to love you? Um, that I think is the number one predictor for success in our field. And then I'd say the number one success in our company in true sports is how excited are you to be a part of the true sports team?Very often in order to be super excited. To be in an offering like we have, you have to see, know and understand what else is out there. If you've worked for a pivot or an ATI or some bigger system, you know that so many of those do not give you the time to treat the patients you want to treat. They probably don't give you the population you want to treat.Once you know that and you look elsewhere and you can find that in true sports, it makes you so excited to come to work because you're doing exactly hopefully what you love to do. I love seeing just how excited someone is to be in the clinic on a given Tuesday. I think that really bodes well. And then the last piece is coachability.Now, I used to really struggle with how to test coach ability. I've mentioned this on the pod before. What we do now is when you interview with us, we'll do a phone screen. I just want to get a sense for who you are as a person, what makes you tick and then when you, I bring you into the clinic and I send you a clinical case before you come into the clinic and when you come in, whoever's interviewing you, A lot of times it's me, sometimes it's a regional director or a clinic director.We are playing the role of that patient that I sent you. And what that does is that gives me the ability to understand, how do you interact with the patient? How do you think on your feet clinically? What do you do when something doesn't necessarily go right? But then once I give you feedback, Afterwards, how coachable are you?How well do you take that feedback that constructive criticism? Do you shut down? Do you say, Oh, interesting. This is how I would, uh, this is how I would utilize that feedback. Do you push back and say, no, I did that. Or, um, that's I disagree with you. Now, disagreeing is totally fair. I think it leads to great conversation and communication.But it all speaks to how coachable are you? It's very, very, very difficult to coach someone to be a good person. It's very, very, very easy to coach someone to be a great sports PT. And that's why we have our onboarding process. That's why we have so many mentors available to you. Um, and, and we've gotten really good at that.What we do for a living. Most people who are listening to this are sports pts. It is not rocket science. It is about how well can you interact with that patient and then your willingness to learn. You're going to get him for a second visit. You're going to get him for a third visit, and we're pretty good at teaching you some of the more complex angles of what you might see in a given presentation.But I'm always looking for coach ability. Um, how hungry you are to learn. Okay, we talked about burnout, but this next question, how do you handle burnout? Mental fatigue? Um, I had, I had mentioned that one of the things we do is we really try hard to get our therapist involved in caseloads. They love. I think that goes a long way.And then, like I said, the flexibility of your schedule. Um, if you feel like you are burning out or you need a break, it's up to you, the therapist to work your schedule around. I need to take time or I need to get away for a family holiday, etcetera. And like I said, That's awesome. You're going to come back, refresh, but also if you take care of your productivity earlier in the week, or you front load an entire week, well, that second week within the pay period, you can take it a little bit easier.And the schedule is yours. So you got to own the schedule. Okay. Last one, how does true sports approach interdisciplinary collaboration? I think I pronounced that properly with other healthcare providers, like orthopedic surgeons, nutritionists, nutritionists, or coaches. So this is what I was talking about with.casting a wide net. I'd say our number one referral source outside of word of mouth and patients sending us their family, loved ones and friends is those who are not medical doctors. So athletic trainers love sending to true sports physical therapy. Strength coaches, gym owners love it. Why? Because we're going to keep your population active.We're going to keep their membership rolling. We're not going to say you got to stop what you're doing. Oh, your back hurts. Don't do that. No. How do you do it more intelligently? Why is it hurting in this activity? Then we're going to get on the phone and talk to your strength coach. Talk to your athletic trainer.If it's from a surgeon, we're going to call the surgeon. Usually multiple times before we hear back from him to collaborate. If you can create this family atmosphere, this the fact that we are all on a team, all of us providers trying to help this athlete in front of us, that is the way you really cast that wide net.And that's That's the way we approach interdisciplinary collaboration. One of my dear friends, a guy named Mark Cesari, is a chiropractor. I get asked a lot, what do you think about chiropractors? I think they're exactly like physical therapists, where you have some outstanding chiropractors, and you have some really crappy chiropractors.And it's all about how they apply their given skillset, just like us. So we get a lot of referrals from chiropractors who say, I'll work on the manual stuff. I'll work on the joint manipulation. Mobilization. Um, rehab necessarily is not my game. Strength and conditioning maybe is not my game or I don't have time to spend 45 minutes to an hour getting your quad stronger.But that's why your knee hurts. Go see the guys at true sports, um, to see if they can work, work it out with you. And then my first call is to the chiropractor. What do you see? What have you worked on? Same thing with the athletic trainer. Too often PTs put ourselves on this pedestal that, Oh, you're in my clinic.I'm the only guy who has answers for you. Whereas in the, in truth, especially with strength coaches, those strength coaches are spending more time with them. Sometimes it's a skills coach. There's so many lacrosse coaches that send us their athletes. And I want to know from the skills coach. What do you see?What are you learning in your time with those those athletes and that's going to color what I'm doing. Also, by the way, here's what we are doing in clinic. Here's what I would love to see this athlete working on maybe as a warm up before you guys get rolling with the session. That's the way we really cast the wide net.That's the way we get interdisciplinary in our collaboration with these referral sources and really these other practitioners that are helping the athlete just like we are. So cool. Hopefully this was valuable to you guys. Um, as I found myself on this, um, virtual job fair, I just felt like there was so much repeats in questions that I get from DMS.And thank you guys all for reaching out on our DM true sports PT on Instagram to let us know what kind of questions you have about the world of sports PT. What do you want to hear more about? Um, what do you wish we would shut up about, but. I kept getting all of these questions and I thought it was worthwhile to share them with our very extended true sports family.So, guys, as always, thank you so much for listening. Let me know what you thought. Share this pod with a friend. Share it with your classmates. Share it with the rest of your sports PT team if you're already a sports PT. Um and Leave us a review, obviously, as always. So thank you guys so much for listening.Stay tuned for next week. We'll go back to our interview, um, set up and can't wait to hear from you guys. Thanks for listening. Bye bye. Bye bye.
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