I have been out for a couple of years now working 40 hours a week in an outpatient orthopedic clinic. I follow a lot of PT groups, influencers, and researchers on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Everyone that walks in the clinic clearly knows about physical therapy. My news feeds are bombarded with PT topics. Most of my friends are PTs. My wife is a PT. I’ve been living in this physical therapy version of The Truman Show…and I love it. The end. 

 

Just kidding.  

 What this filtered life has blinded me from was that to the general public we are still relatively unknown.  

On your personal page: if you post about how MRI findings of disc bulges don’t correlate with physical symptoms you’ll only get 1 like. It doesn’t count because it’s your grandma and she likes EVERYTHING you post. Your cousin posted a picture of her ugly cat and it got 72 likes.  

In the general public: we are still often confused with athletic trainers, personal trainers, massage therapists, and occupational therapists 

In the clinic: patients constantly make comments comparing us to other healthcare practitioners to the tune of “you massage like a massage therapist,” “you manipulate like a chiropractor,” “dry needling? Oh, like an acupuncturist?”, “you diagnose kinda like my physician,” and “these exercises feel like i have a personal trainer.” 

I’m not even going to lie. At first I used to get a little insulted or even annoyed. I’d be like “Pshh! Massage therapist? Ma’am ACTUALLY we call it manual therapy” in my most pretentious voice drowning in my own self-satisfaction. I got defensive mostly because of the popular figure of speech “jack of all trades, master of none”. In my head I had this idea that they were implying that I was mediocre at everything, and that I had to work extra hard to prove my worth.

Then I matured. After a bit of self-reflection I started to take it as the highest form of compliment. Think about it. These professions are mostly sub-specialized to be so good at one thing that they become known for that one thing. Then a patient tells me that I administer that treatment comparable to them? I don’t know how much more you could want.   

To put it in a different way (because I love analogies) if all you have is a hammer, then everyone starts to look like a nail. Do you always need a corkscrew, or a nail file, or tweezers? Nope! But a lot of people have Swiss Army Knives. If they don’t, they at least know what a Swiss Army Knife is.  

I love being evidence-informed. I love being eclectic. I love that I can have a variety of patients and use any tool that I want to get them better and help them achieve their goals. We should try to model ourselves after the Swiss Army Knife and become a one-stop shop for most patients’ healthcare needs. And like the Swiss Army Knife, the value we provide will be more globally known and we can someday become a household name. 

As physical therapists, we shouldn’t even be trying to define our practice by one intervention instead we provide value by helping patients achieve their functional goals no matter what tools we utilize to get them there. Are they going to care that you didn’t get a cavitation with your lumbar manip? No. Are they going to be happy that they’ll finally be able to mow their lawn? Absolutely!  

*I understand that this blog is heavily biased towards outpatient ortho, but the message could still apply to different settings. At the very least I hope it made you think!  

 

TL;DR: Get over yourself and you’ll see that physical therapy is awesome and that we can co-exist with other professions in harmony. We’re not the jack of all trades, master of none; we are more like Swiss army knives in that we’re really versatile and can help in many different situations.