When I was in my last clinical during PT school, I sought out PT for posterior tendonosis. The therapist I saw was pretty awful – he did dry needling on me, sent me to do exercises with an aide, and barely interacted with me after the first session. He treated multiple people at once, and when I tried to suggest that this wasn’t working, he told me that PT wasn’t working. I realized he was just trying to make money and found another PT clinic. The second therapist told me I should view that first experience as a lesson – I should remember how I had felt as a patient and make sure to never let me future patients feel that way.
Sometimes you need to experience something less than ideal to better recognize something great. I think about this a lot as I read PTCAS application essays. Applicants often describe their aide or shadowing experiences, and sometimes I cringe reading about the way things were done in the clinics they describe. Sometimes as I’m reading an essay, I’ll even write in the comments, “Just so you know that treatment is outdated” or “Having an aide do that was probably not legal.”
These comments are more for the reader’s own understanding of the field and less about changing things for an admissions committee. It’s easy to spend time in one clinic or with one PT and think you have a great understanding of the field. And maybe you do, but you probably have an even better understanding of how things are done inn that one clinic or with that one PT.
As you gain other PT experiences before, during, and after PT school, you’ll start to realize that not everyone treats the same. Sometimes this is frustrating – especially as a new grad you may find yourself wondering how to treat a common diagnosis when you’ve seen different therapists approach it completely differently. Sometimes patients have a hard time understanding the lack of standardized care. But it is also part of what makes PT an art. Many practitioners can approach a given problem differently and still get good results. And this is why research is so important. Scientists are trying to discover what works and what doesn’t to best guide practice and teach tomorrow’s clinicians. Unfortunately, as you get into the research, you’ll often discover therapists continuing to practice using outdated treatments.
On a personal level, sometimes you’ll realize that the PT you really respected as an aide was actually using a lot of bad science. While this can be a tough pill to swallow, it is part of growing as a clinician. Being open-minded will allow you to keep growing in the field. And it’s important to see things done in a less than ideal way to learn more about what your ideals are.