This I believe...

Last semester, I wanted our HE-DPT Students to contemplate their values as a future physical therapist. Here is my take on professionalism:

I believe PROFESSIONALISM is the total package: it is the mind, body, and heart of physical therapist practice. To have any 2 of these 3 is not good enough-we must encompass all 3 components in order to exude the values and behaviors worthy of professional respect. In my 28 years of practice and 17 years of teaching, I have learned that this “total package” is also what makes a successful PT student.  Let me take a moment and explain…

The mind: immediately we think about the individual who is smart, gets good grades, and retains information well. I’d like to suggest that you are NOT your GPA---and the MIND part of practice is actually more sophisticated that getting good grades, it is what you’re thinking and not what grades you’ve received. Instead, habits of mind include things like:

·         Questioning: having a natural curiosity about why and how and what if. It also means asking because you’re interested and not because of a grade.

·         Recognizing patterns and seeing connections: for example, noticing how the synergistic actions of the muscles of the shoulder are both similar and different to the synergistic actions of the muscles of the pelvis. Noticing your own behaviors and patterns and how they impact you as a learner.

·         Reasoning: using your brain, not someone else’s power point presentation, to think through a problem or situation-including clinical reasoning and ethical reasoning. No one will ever think for you, which is why you must think for yourselves

·         Continuing to learn-seeing yourself as a seeker of information and never as a closed book, being open to the fact that what you THOUGHT was so MIGHT NOT BE, and having the internal desire to become a better person than you were the day before.

Body: There is no question that we are a physical profession. Understanding the human body, being in tune with how it works and most importantly how it moves, is key to being a good physical therapist. Do you see things as movement. Do you recognize a body type with similar body types and complaints. If you’re not sure what I mean, compare the frame of a long-distance runner and a wrestler.  As PT’s, we also use our body to demonstrate, correct, or provide support to other people—good PT’s know how to recognize our bodies as important tools that help to teach patients. Later this month, you’ll learn that expert PT’s have a strong sense of movement and how to teach others using movement.

Heart: To me, the heart of the PT Professional is what is most noticeable to those around him or her. It is the student that works extra hard to understand a concept and then never forgets it, or the therapist that ignores the fact that it’s lunch time in order to finish a treatment session, or the individual who LISTENS to the needs and concerns of every individual patient in order to make an individualized plan of care. It is the HEART of the PT that also holds the core values and ethics of the profession, even when it is uncomfortable, unpopular, or . Your patient’s may not realize it, but it is your HEART that they respond to in therapy. Consider this excerpt from the book entitled “Stroke of Insight” written by a young scientist who had a stroke:

                “One nurse was very attentive to my needs: Was I warm enough? Did I need water? Was I in pain? Naturally I felt safe in her care. She made eye contact and was clearly providing me with a healing space. A different nurse, who never made eye contact, shuffled her feet as though she were in pain. This women brought me a tray with milk and jello, but neglected to realize that my hands and fingers could not open the containers. I desperately waned to consume something, but she was oblivious to my needs. She raised her voice when she spoke to me, not realizing that I wasn’t deaf. Under the circumstances, her lack of willingness to connect with me scared me. I did not feel safe in her care.”

The heart of physical therapy helps us put others BEFORE ourselves. It gives us our ability to empathize and to care,  it is how we look at each individual as a person and NOT a diagnosis, it is how we form connections with other humans who happen to need our help.  The heart, in my opinion, is how we translate our mind and body into compassionate, meaningful concern in order to solve movement problems. It’s why we take steps to improve not only ourselves and our patients, but our profession and the world at large.