Sound effect-y.
All right,
this episode brought to you by Brooks IHL,
elevating clinician education for the next
generation of physical therapists,
residencies,
fellowships in whatever flavor of ice
cream you prefer, pediatrics, geriatrics,
orthopedics, pelvic floor, get your mix.
Find them online at brooksihl.org.
That is brooksihl.org.
Elevate your career with Brooks.
Our episode today,
our guest was headed for a career.
I am not making this up, probably.
As a reptile surgeon, yes, crocodiles,
venomous snakes, but a spinal cord injury?
changed the course of everything.
Now she's a clinician for humans,
a coordinator,
an educator who blends psychologically
informed care and lifestyle medicine to
treat some of the most complex cases in
our profession.
She's the mentor you wish you had, honest,
empowering, radically human-centered,
and she likes creepy crawly things.
In her world,
healing is more than symptom resolution.
It's about showing up, slowing down,
which I need to do,
and seeing the patient as a whole.
She might have black coffee in one hand
and a tangled rope metaphor in another.
She's here to remind us that doing the
basics really well is elite level care.
Let's welcome Faith Stokes to the show.
Faith, how'd I do on the intro?
You did great.
So I can't,
you can't have an introduction where I
talk about crocodiles and snakes without
being like backstory me.
Absolutely.
So I was actually interested in reptiles
since I was a child,
as in my mother said the first time
I tried to catch a snake,
I was still in a diaper.
Yeah.
All right.
So she actually taught me how to read
using snake books from the library because
it was the only way she could get
me to sit down long enough.
Genius.
So I was using their Latin names before
I was ten.
When I went to college,
I was interested in veterinary medicine
and everyone that knew me said, well,
of course, she's going to become a vet.
Of course,
she's going to work with reptiles.
She's going to go to zoos.
I was already working at a zoo.
In the reptile department.
Where were you geographically?
I was a volunteer for the Chattanooga Zoo
in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
So I was there first and to my
knowledge, only reptile volunteer.
I emailed them and said,
I want to work in that department.
And they said,
people don't usually want to do that.
Especially, yeah.
Yeah.
And I said,
I will only work in that department.
That's what I want to do.
So they brought me in.
I worked with the big pythons and the
big boas.
I got to hang out with the Komodo
dragons and the alligators.
My son loved coming to see me there.
So this was just a normal pace of
life.
My research in undergrad was on creating
or finding antibiotic type proteins in
snake venom.
So using it to treat antibiotic resistant
bacterial strains.
So I was playing with that research wise,
got to compete at several conferences with
it.
But my husband in two thousand eleven had
a spinal cord injury and I was going
to have to leave,
obviously for specialized training to go
and finish that career path.
And I remember keenly.
He was in inpatient rehab at the time
at Siskin in Chattanooga.
They were wonderful.
And I was like,
I don't think I'm going to be able
to go.
I can't leave you guys.
And he was like,
I think you should try PT.
They have a doctorate program here in
Chattanooga.
You could stay at home with us.
You could still be Dr. Stokes.
It's a super stable career.
They have good insurance.
He'd obviously been looking into this.
And he said the phrase,
I see you in them.
Wow.
And I was like,
I'm standing there in jeans, Jimmy.
And I had been in a stream that
morning chasing hellbenders,
which is a salamander.
I don't know what that is.
Okay, good.
Yeah.
Thank you.
What's their Latin name?
I don't know.
I don't remember anymore.
Faith,
you could have literally said gibberish.
I would be like, God, I am not.
No, no, I am not going to,
I'm not going to mess that up.
I've been out of it long enough.
I was in a stream.
I had mud up like mid femur and
I looked at him and I was like,
they sit in a business office in business
professional clothes.
I have nothing in common with these
people.
And he's like, I don't know.
I see you in them.
Just think about it.
So when I started my PT program,
I was accepted.
I lied on my application and told them
I always wanted to be a PT and
I related to the field.
You know,
anything that you think you have to do
to get into a graduate program.
You wanted to be like a Python trainer.
So that's PT, right?
Same thing.
Yeah.
No, it was a lie.
My first day of school,
I just remember sitting in there thinking,
I don't want to be here.
I don't want to be.
You very rarely get bitten.
It's never zero.
It's probably a higher impedance,
but you rarely get bitten.
People who do herpetology do really well
with TBI patients.
Why is that?
Just because the TBI patients are super
impulsive and aggressive.
It's the same as a crocodile.
That was not on my bingo card,
but I bet you a bunch of TV,
I bet you a bunch of neuro-PTs,
I can hear them right now going, yeah,
that tracks, that tracks.
I could totally tackle someone and wrestle
them down and talk to them calmly the
whole time and keep your blood pressure
down and they're going to stop struggling
eventually.
But anyway, long story, very short.
I was probably in my second year.
I went on a residency call with the
APTA to just look at residencies because I
was like, if I'm going to do this,
I need to do this.
I need to like it is what it
is.
I'm here.
This is not going to change.
So who do I want to be?
And maybe I just haven't found that
version of myself yet.
So that's what launched me into my
training pathway from that world into this
one.
But I will say that even just the
work that I did with reptiles,
kind of along the lines of the
conversation with the patient population I
work with,
With a reptile,
they have no attachment to you.
They don't have mammalian brains.
So they could kill me.
I could die.
They're not going to miss me.
They don't care that I exist.
You take care of them because it's a
living creature and it deserves patience,
love, kindness,
whether it can reciprocate or not.
And so that was what I really pulled
from my reptile training into patient
cares.
There's sometimes there are patients who
seem,
and I'm gonna highlight that they seem
unlovable.
And I just remind myself,
if you can care for a boa constrictor
that really just wanted you to die,
but you did everything you could to take
care of that animal because it was alive
and it deserved to be taken care of,
you can take care of this person and
they don't have to love you back.
And carrying that into care,
humans respond completely differently to
that approach than reptiles.
I know that shocks you.
This is my shocked face.
I know, right?
Humans respond differently to that
approach when you walk into the room and
you say,
regardless of what I get out of this
relationship,
I'm going to meet their needs.
That's powerful.
Did you ever ask your, I mean,
you must've asked your husband, like,
but what did you see in me?
Like,
I see them and I see you in
them.
I see them in you.
Did you ever ask him, like,
what's that mean?
Like what, like, you know,
he could probably word it a little bit
better,
but Joey has had several TBIs and words
are not his strength,
which was why in that moment,
that was all he could give me.
Um, but I will be honest,
like the people,
this is something I tell my mentees,
the people that know you,
and love you for who you are will
see potential in you that you don't see.
And sometimes you just have to trust them.
So now like looking at what I do
and my identity and like,
I hope I'm in my nineties treating
patients.
Like I don't, I love what I do.
And so I don't know what he saw,
but he was right.
So I think that's,
that was what I took away from it.
Even now making career decisions,
like I'll think, oh my gosh,
I don't know that that's the best fit
for me.
Or I don't know that I should do
that.
And the people that love me are in
my ear saying, no, that's you go.
So that was my first introduction to just
jumping blindly off a cliff when someone
told me to jump.
And it's been a bit of a pattern
for me lately.
I love that.
Um,
I love the fact that like we've got,
you know, what,
three hundred thousand PTs in the country
or whatever.
And there's like stories like that.
But you'd never know.
Right.
We just assume.
Right.
I tore my ACL as a soccer player
in high school and my grandmother.
Those are the two cliches.
Right.
That's a cool story, though.
Thank you for telling me that.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
We apparently met.
We're going to talk about what you're
talking about, CSM.
The prompt I put on LinkedIn was like,
let's put some butts in seats.
A lot of people,
APTA has a monumentally large job.
Yes.
Which essentially is like communicate,
all of the four hundred i don't even
know bajillion sessions at this one
conference we're talking about csm which
is in a couple of months i remember
my first csm which was la and there's
a story there which i don't remember and
i remember my professor had asked me like
what'd you think of csm and i was
like it was a circus and she goes
it was and i go with a bunch
of circuses in it like like twenty
different circuses in the big top and i
remember just being like for someone like
me
overstimulated but i like that sort of
thing but you leave like just spent so
we met at csm in twenty fifteen sixteen
whenever that was when it was la it's
gonna be in la so faith and jimmy
are going full circle um what are you
you said you remember we met i don't
remember this help me out what did i
did i do something bad no you didn't
You had won an award for this podcast
idea.
My program had won an award for a
fundraiser.
All of the students that had won awards
for something,
were all pulled together to prepare us for
the ceremony so that we knew how to
behave and what to say and what not
to say and where to walk you know
yeah they were they were corralling the
toddlers um so we were we were all
like grouped together at the bottom of the
stairs talking and you started talking
about this podcast that i remember you
describing it with such excitement
And you were, I don't know if you,
I think at that moment you were saying,
I don't know if this is something I'm
going to keep doing,
but it was just something you were super
excited about.
And then, like I said earlier,
a few years later, I was like,
he did it.
It's still going because I saw it pop
up and I thought he will never remember
me, but that's completely fine.
That was a decade ago.
That was.
I know.
I mean, that was.
I know.
It's wild.
And like, when you turn back.
You know,
the stupid cliche is cliche for a reason.
It's like, where did a decade go?
Like, it's crazy.
And then I do the math on like
number of episodes, number of,
I don't really care about episodes,
like number of conversations,
number of people you met,
number of stories you've heard and shared.
And you're like something like sixteen
hundred episodes in ten years,
which I'm not a mathematician,
but I'm glad it's ten.
It's round.
It's one hundred and sixty episodes about
per year,
which means almost every other day.
That's intense.
I need to get out more.
I know I do.
All right.
So you're going to CSM.
I am.
You're going to be on the big stage.
Congratulations.
Although just because your your thing
wasn't picked doesn't mean it wasn't a
good submission.
Absolutely correct.
And I will interview anybody who had a
great submission but didn't get picked.
There's only so many things that they can
put on the stage.
They try to mix it up.
So it's not the same things or same
people over again.
wanted to throw that psa in there a
little little shot for apta to be like
we i see what you're trying to do
it's not easy so what what what is
what how do we put butts in seats
what's on the marquee what do you want
who do you want in the seat who
who should be there what are they going
to get when they come see faith is
it just you or do you have co-speakers
i do i have a co-speaker
So Mika and I are presenting.
Oh, now you've got different Mika.
Now I've got the last names mixed up.
Well, I'm going to meet this Mika.
I'm going to know too.
You are going to meet Mika.
She's wonderful.
Um,
she works in the residency with me and
Mika and I are presenting.
So we're,
we are both pelvic health specialists and
we're presenting on a syndrome.
That the story behind this syndrome,
which I think is what makes it
interesting,
is males were getting on discussion boards
for years talking about this topic.
And what we found was that in about
twenty twenty,
the medical community finally said we
should take this seriously.
This is a thing.
Only took two decades.
Yeah, it only took a while.
So but in twenty twenty,
the medical community said pelvic health
therapists are the therapist,
are the provider of choice to send these
patients to.
Guess what we knew about this population?
Nothing, nothing.
This was the first thing that was
published.
So these patients is called hard flaccid
syndrome and it is a syndrome,
meaning that it is not one thing.
cluster.
It is a cluster of things.
Absolutely.
And so what we started working on together
was these patients were coming in and they
were telling us it was just a,
like a, just a few patients,
but those of us that started seeing them
started to see more and more and more.
And I
What I think has been interesting for me
as a clinician,
now I'm going to have to look up
her name because y'all,
it is literally bugging me because it's
Mitchell is stuck in my head.
I think it's Bryant.
It is Bryant.
Okay.
Now I feel better.
Mika Bryant and I,
she practices in North Carolina.
We started actually doing teams
conferencing on these patients because
there was nothing in the evidence that
The only thing that we were finding for
a while were case studies.
And they were looking at one component of
the condition,
the pelvic floor component or the direct
genital approach.
And what Mika and I both found was
that you had to treat the whole person.
And so per my general population,
pelvic health therapists who work with
patients who have syndromes,
who work with patients who have
complicating autoimmune, orthopedic,
yellow flag, lifestyle issues,
pelvic floor dysfunction,
sexual dysfunction.
This is a patient population where all of
those things merge together.
And if you aren't addressing each
component in some way,
they do not respond well to conservative
care.
So what we're doing is this is our
title is a little bit tongue in cheek.
So it's called the syndrome itself is a
partially erect penis and it stays that
way.
It never fully relaxes.
They never get a full erection.
So we called the presentation.
It's not that hard clinical reasoning in
the presentation of hard flaccid.
No notes.
Well done.
Slow clap.
Because that's the point, right?
You got to get attention.
I try to tell people the headline is
to get attention.
The sub headline is to explain the
context, not the other way around.
So keep going.
Well done.
So we came up with the title and
we present one of my patients that I
treated for this who got better.
And we track how he did through treatment.
But we talk through how do you evaluate
each of these areas?
How do you prioritize one area over the
other?
And that's where the clinical reasoning
component comes in.
So while it is very specifically the
entire, I want to be very clear,
I would welcome any specialty,
but our entire presentation is about
penises.
Got it.
What we talk through specifically is how
do you clinically reason through a
syndrome?
How do you make the decision to prioritize
the orthopedic dysfunction?
How do you prioritize the psychosocial?
How do you get these patients in
counseling?
and help them find a counselor who can
have a conversation about sexual
dysfunction with compassion and recognize
there's even an addiction component to
this.
So that's where Mika's specialty is.
Her background prior to being a PT was
working in the counseling arena with
addiction.
What kind of addiction?
So there's a substance issue?
It can be substance.
It can even be masturbation.
So they, yes,
this is very much a pelvic health topic,
but I think it represents well,
even across orthopedics,
when we are talking about the fact that
these patients have to be managed
holistically.
And as you evaluate each of these
components,
what Mika and I both have found is
that the
these patients often have some type of
past medical history of trauma.
And so when you are approaching the
addiction,
when you are approaching the issues that
these patients face,
the compassion has to be completely
different and they may not tell you.
So my patient didn't tell me his trauma
till nine months into treatment.
Mika's patient, it was over a
Those are things that if you aren't aware
that it might be there,
or you're just assuming they'll tell you
if it is,
especially given that it is individuals
likely to identify as male,
they just might not talk about it.
Um,
I've never talked about this in the show,
but I, I have a penis.
And if I had this, like,
I'm just trying to picture,
cause that's what we do, right?
We try to empathy, not sympathy, empathy,
empathy.
So I'm just like, gosh, that would be,
that would be devastating.
Right?
Like, and what you said,
then of course I go to what you
said before, which is like,
what do we do?
We ask for advice.
You can't ask one of your buddies, right?
You're probably not going to, you could,
but hopefully you're probably not going
to, you're going to do this,
go to the,
Reddit,
you're going to log in with your burner
account, right?
The account no one can track you with.
And you're going to find nothing.
And then you're going to go,
I'm the only person who's dealing with
this.
Absolutely.
And then you're not going to go anywhere
else because no one ever put down an
exit sign that said, actually,
if you have this, go this way.
So for a long time, this was happening.
That sounds awful.
It was definitely for these patients.
They were having to self-support one
another when they did find each other.
Yeah.
Even if you did find each other.
So like that is sort of how the
internet, right?
Cause even in the,
in the medical community for a long time,
this was discredited and they've even
started doing studies now and they're
still providers who don't believe this is
a syndrome or an issue.
Yeah.
And it is devastating.
Quite literally,
there's visible proof of this.
There is.
You're talking about what you're talking
about.
You're seeing.
You can see it.
It's difficult to fake.
I mean, I have one of these.
That'd be difficult to fake.
Correct.
No, that's...
I think in medicine,
and this is a faith soapbox,
and it's something I had to get over
with as someone who practices in complex
cases,
we get really comfortable being the expert
in the room.
And anytime we are not the expert in
something, it makes us uncomfortable.
And our discomfort as a human is going
to cause us to respond in a certain
way.
So each individual is going to have a
different response to that.
And I find that in the medical community,
especially with sexual dysfunction,
and that's why Mika and I were so
excited to present this together,
is she messaged me and said,
Faith,
no one is presenting on male sexual
function.
There's a lot of stuff on females.
Last year, they only had,
I forget how many male talks.
And she's like, this is an issue.
This is a problem.
We've both struggled with this.
We need to present on this.
And so we we put in to do
it together.
But just the medical providers I speak to
now,
when they say I'm not comfortable talking
about that.
Mika and I will tell them, that's fine.
That's fine.
If they start talking to you and you're
uncomfortable, send them to me.
I will screen them.
If they are not appropriate for my office,
I will let you know where they need
to go.
But if this is not a conversation you're
comfortable having, that is,
I don't know where that provider is coming
from,
either from past experiences
experiences or training.
I am trained to talk about this.
I am comfortable talking about this.
So just send them to me.
Please do not send them back to the
internet.
Yeah.
So this is a talk that's going to
be about a case study.
This is a talk that's going to be
about a syndrome that like maybe a lot
of people, I mean,
maybe a lot of people in the room
won't know.
But this is also gonna be a talk
about how you reasoned your way through
this.
So even if you're like,
I don't treat pelvic,
I might never see a patient like this,
there's still gonna be a component where
you're like, hey,
here's this thing that no one knew
anything about, and here was what we saw,
and then here's what we did,
and here's what happened.
And PTs, I mean, from what I know,
PTs love stuff like that.
So even if you're like,
this doesn't make any sense.
I love things that don't make any sense
looking forward,
like someone who's going to work with
reptiles, but now as a PT.
And then you look backwards and you're
like, oh, all the dots line up.
That makes perfect sense.
So even if you're like, ah, male pelvic,
no thanks.
Feels like there's still some gems.
There is,
especially for the orthopedic component.
That's something I've...
Which section is this in?
This is in pelvic health.
Got it.
Okay.
But it's sneaky.
Cause it's like it's in pelvic health,
but you're like, Hey,
just don't overlook it.
That's the,
that's the cool part about CSM is like
it got,
and for people don't know each section
puts forth,
there is allowed X number of talks per
day, whatever,
because capacity and money and that's how
it works.
And, um,
Even if you're like, I'm an ortho PT,
I would say you're doing yourself and your
patients a disservice if you stay only on
the ortho track.
Right.
Like, hey, man, you bro out on that.
Three hundred and sixty two days a year,
maybe it's called combined sections,
meaning they're all there.
dip man like touch a little like you
know remember remember trivial pursuit
don't just get green wedges like get a
blue get a yellow get a pink so
when you leave your pie is full so
if you were considering taking jimmy's
approach which i do i do agree with
the reason why a talk like this can
be so important is specifically as as
someone who identifies as female this can
be incredibly hard for male patients to
speak with me about
And they may talk to someone who appears
to identify as male.
This is a conversation these patients
bring up.
And Mika and I both had the experience
where we were learning how to navigate
these conversations to ask appropriate
questions.
Like these are challenging conversations
to have with patients.
And if you've ever had the experience
where a patient has brought up an
uncomfortable topic,
and you didn't know how to respond in
a way that was going to be the
most supportive of them,
that is what we go through in this
talk is how did we learn to communicate
to these patients to normalize what
they're feeling, to reassure them,
to talk them through the process,
to get them to the right specialist,
but recognizing that in syndromes,
a lot of times the PT is
becomes the PCP.
We are the provider in the middle that
is comfortable talking about everything,
but knows, okay,
it's time to send you to this person.
Okay,
it's time to loop this person into the
equation.
So I'm excited because I enjoy talking
through clinical reasoning.
I think that's one of those topics that
we need a class on,
but a class on clinical reasoning doesn't
usually sell.
And it's usually hard to frame into a
curriculum because it's best done when
we're doing it on live patients or on
real patient case studies.
So for me,
I think the thing that's exciting about
this is to take the patient case all
the way through to recognize that the
standard clinical presentation now has
some variation.
And to be able to reason through,
is this condition present?
Recognize medical providers in your area
may tell you it's not even a real
thing and not want to treat it.
How do you help them find the right
provider?
But then for me,
as I was in my fellowship specifically,
I was exposed to some training.
I believe her name was Hughes in twenty
twenty.
Christina Hughes.
She did a paper on patients who had
been in pelvic health and failed pelvic
health like they did not recover.
Sexual function, prolapse,
urinary incontinence, et cetera.
She took an exhaustive approach to the
spine.
and all of them got better.
And it really challenged me to say,
how good is my spine exam?
And when we look at this syndrome,
there are two places the spine can really
begin to play into their presentation.
And that's something that Mika and I both
have found clinically is that we have to
be exhaustive.
We have to progress through full range of
motion with overpressure and make sure
we're addressing any type of source of
those symptoms just because of where it
can get disrupted.
And again,
there's a lot of wonderful researchers
that specialize in sexual medicine only
doing research in this population now
trying to understand those mechanisms.
I love theory.
but i want to know what i need
to do monday because they're going to be
here on monday so there's a lot of
theory going around right now um we will
briefly touch on that in our talk but
we are mostly talking boots on the ground
what do you need to do on monday
what do you need to hand them when
they come in the door what message do
they need to hear what's their prognosis
How long is it going to take to
do an evaluation on this person?
What should you allocate for time-wise if
they are uncomfortable with a certain type
of provider?
How can you supplement care in that area
to keep them moving forward?
So our hope is to make it a
really practical approach to a challenging
case, pulling all of those components in.
Do you know when it is?
When's your talk?
It's on Thursday.
I don't remember the date yet.
Thursday.
I think Valentine's Day is Saturday.
So, fourteen, thirteen, twelfth.
The twelfth at two.
At two.
And say the name again,
just so people will mark it down.
I'll put it in the show notes, too.
It's not that hard.
Clinical reasoning in the management of
hard flaccid.
You got to earn their attention to get
them get butts in seats.
I'm not going to lie.
I was a little disappointed not to get
Valentine's Day because I thought like a
penis talk on Valentine's Day was actually
going to be pretty fun.
But I'll take Thursday.
It's pre-Valentine's Day, little surprise.
Yes, it is.
We got to pay some bills.
Hang tight one second.
Episode is sponsored by Empower EMR.
It's built by physical therapists for
physical therapists with customizable
templates,
lightning fast documentation and
scheduling that actually makes sense in
this world.
Empower EMR is the EMR your team deserves.
Learn more, take a test drive,
kick the tires, light the fires.
Empower EMR.
And we want to make sure you know
about this organization.
If you haven't heard about them,
my first exposure was at an APTA national
conference.
It was called Go Baby Go,
supporting pediatric mobility and play for
children of all abilities through those
little modified, you know,
the battery powered cars.
You modify them and make it's like a
hackathon.
And this way,
kids have mobility devices and they don't
have to, like,
pay for wheelchairs that cost thousands
and thousands of dollars.
And they're awesome.
And then you can help build them.
It's all open sourced.
Let kids be kids,
even if they roll a little different.
Learn how to donate or get involved at
GoBabyGo.org.
That was Cole Galloway who kicked off that
initiative.
And I saw him in an APTA event.
That was the first time I ever heard
him speak.
All right.
So you have a meeting.
But I want to make sure that we
get to this.
I post on LinkedIn.
I now treat LinkedIn like Twitter.
I posted something.
You didn't disagree with me,
but you were like, hey,
and I think we probably most likely agree
on what I said,
but we'll bring it on.
We'll learn.
So I will read the post.
I said, hey, unpopular opinion.
Nobody cares about what you did.
Not on LinkedIn, not on Instagram,
not on Facebook, nowhere.
I wrote a book.
I launched a podcast.
I posted a video.
Cool, great, fantastic.
But what does it have to do for
me?
This is the lesson that I'm trying to
show people.
I'm trying to grab their attention, faith,
and then teach them the lesson.
I got to get their attention first.
I continue to say social media isn't your
trophy shelf.
It's a value exchange.
People care about four main things.
Does this save me time, make me money,
make me better?
Does this make me laugh for a second?
If the answer's no,
then your post is just a digital pat
on the back.
And congratulations,
you're seconds away from dislocating your
shoulder.
Don't dislocate your shoulder patting your
back.
Want people to listen?
Want your stuff to sound like it matters?
Stop announcing your accomplishments and
start explaining how what you do lifts
other people up.
When you help someone rise,
suddenly everyone starts paying attention.
And then you said counterargument.
And I love counterarguments.
Do you want to read your counterargument
in your voice?
Expand it for me.
All right.
So my counterargument...
was to ask,
what if this individual is a minority,
marginalized, or atypical in their field?
So these individuals inspire others who
identify with them to see these
accomplishments as achievable.
I often work with students who are
first-generation college graduates.
Posting means that our community,
so our PT community,
can support and cheer for them in a
way that their environment can't because
they don't understand their experience.
And for me,
this could certainly fall under how does
this make me better?
Yeah.
But I want to see their accomplishments.
I want to promote them.
I want to cheer for them,
especially in these cases.
But then the flip side of that argument
is when we're trying to fight for
equality.
we can't decide who that goes to.
It has to be for everyone.
So I'm okay with posting accomplishments
and maybe that's my unpopular opinion,
but if I,
I don't know if someone is a minority,
if they're atypical,
if they're marginalized in some way.
Um, so it's,
it is easier for me to say,
you know what you post it,
what you do is on you.
What I do is on me and I'd
rather clap.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't disagree.
I think we probably are more...
So thank you for challenging me because
I'm not here to just post stuff and
have everybody agree with me.
I agree, a hundred percent.
I'm struggling with like,
that's what I meant,
but it isn't what I said.
But I don't disagree with you.
So I'm just like, where...
So maybe if I had added like to
motivate others,
because like I did something amazing.
I'm here for it.
I guess my problem is...
Especially PTs.
When they wrote a book,
it takes them months or years.
Faith, I'm excited when I read a book.
I pat myself on the back when I
finish reading a book.
I cannot imagine or fathom writing a book.
My problem,
what I'm trying to get people to see
is, I agree with you,
You took nine months to write a book
and fourteen seconds to post about it.
You said, I wrote a book.
What I want you to say is,
look what I'm able to help you unlock.
Because that will get people to go,
hang on a second, what does that mean?
So you're right.
Your critique of what I said was right.
What I'm trying to figure out is how
do I say it better?
Because what I meant is if someone did
something from a minority,
how do we make sure everybody recognizes,
lifts that person up so that what you're
saying is more people see it?
I was doing it more of a reframe,
which is like,
I see what a lot of you are
doing.
I wrote a paper.
Tell me what I'm going to get if
I give you eleven minutes to read the
paper, if I could even access the paper.
Please give me free access to.
I got to see so much greatness going
around.
Like I launched,
I published another podcast episode.
Cool story, Jimmy.
That's about you.
What I want to say is we're going
to make sense of lizards and clinical
reasoning with mildly flaccid penises,
and you're going to walk out not feeling
uncomfortable if this ever comes to you.
You know what I mean?
I recorded a podcast episode,
as the kids would say, cool story, bro.
Tell it again.
So I don't disagree with you.
I have two thoughts for you.
Okay, go.
Okay.
One,
you're coming at this perspective as a
mentor.
You do this for a living.
Okay.
So you in that post were mentoring us,
mentoring potentially people who do not
know how this currency works.
Got it.
So I didn't understand the audience
enough.
You were mentoring to say, Hey y'all,
You're coming into your own.
You're doing great things.
Fantastic.
This is how you leverage that because deep
down inside,
I don't know anybody that didn't become a
PT to be really good at what they
do in whatever avenue they do it to
help people.
Like it was too much work to not
come in to help people.
So I think you were coming to it
from a mentoring perspective.
what I've had to learn from a mentoring
perspective is that if someone has never
had this modeled for them,
so say they have never been in an
environment where they've had a platform,
this is the first time they've been given
one and they get up there with a
microphone and they're just sweating and
like, they don't know what to do.
And like,
you're up there trying to help them and
ask them questions like you're doing now
with me.
I've learned that when they post those
things and it's really comes across as
bragging,
I can either walk away from it or
I can say, no,
this is another mentoring opportunity for
me where I can get in the comments
and say, wow,
I can tell why you're so proud of
this accomplishment.
What was the biggest barrier you hit and
how did you solve that problem?
Help me understand how you did.
Yeah.
What is the biggest lesson?
But I was trying to be funny and
sarcastic.
So now what I'm going to wait,
what you said, you had two things.
Was that two things or one thing?
Those were the two things.
So you,
that was the perspective was the
mentoring.
And then as we try to elevate our
mentoring,
we can either walk away and say,
I'm not mentoring this person.
They're not a nice person.
Or I could say, you know what?
I'm going to assume.
That they just don't have the knowledge of
a skill.
Well, I say that all the time.
I used to say.
When I got into this profession,
I looked around and PTs were bad at
communicating.
And then I was like, I amended that.
I was like, oh no, you know what?
That's not it.
Um,
I think you're trained to communicate
certain ways and you do those things and
you,
and surprisingly the things you're trained
in and you do a lot, you're good.
You're better at, right?
And then when you look at mass
communication, faith,
it's almost as if it's an entire degree
in college.
And I have one of those mass
communication, but not the same.
It's not.
And then I come to the defense again
and say,
PTs aren't bad or healthcare providers
aren't bad at communicating.
I'm using air quotes on a podcast.
You lack the T's and P's.
Did I ever talk to you about the
T's and P's?
I think you talked about it on your
last episode.
Tools, training, time, people,
process to then generate the product,
which is the thing.
That's work.
Yes, it is.
And I, I recognize that like, Hey man,
I'm sharing this thing and I'm doing it
while I'm on the bus or just between
whatever's.
And yeah,
I what I hope to do is not
give a lecture.
I want to give a bunch of little
digest.
I'm just going to be the guy who's
like,
let's make you one tenth of one percent
better today.
But I see where my sarcasm might have
missed it a little bit.
I was close.
Here's the best part.
Got a degree in communications in two
thousand one.
Been doing it a lot.
Still a process to get better at it.
You could still miss the mark.
You always have to be evaluating that
because, because you,
even if you know the audience, well,
the audience is so vast and so wide,
like you're, it's not going to land.
It's a bell curve again.
It's going to land with a lot,
but then also there's going to be, well,
what F and what actually,
and then faith comes in the comments.
Like what I'm like, Oh, you know what?
Yeah.
Okay.
No, she has a point.
So here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to take this lesson.
I'm going to go back to that post
and I'm going to remix it as the
kids would say and see if I can
make it better because that's all we do.
Were you great with your first?
Do you remember your first patient?
No, I really don't.
I don't remember mine,
but I remember just like being like,
I would probably apologize to my first one
hundred.
Right.
Wouldn't we all?
No, I'll tell you this.
I can tell you one of my first
ones.
And it's probably one of the reasons why
I don't remember like the initial
patients.
He was a stroke patient and he came
in and man,
he was having a hard time like through
his paperwork.
When he left, I was like,
he's not coming back.
You know,
we're almost nine years later and we still
have lunch every month.
Really?
So hold on a second.
You had to have asked, like,
what was it to go from throwing your
papers to nine years?
Like,
did you just give him enough compassion?
Like, what was it?
I didn't get upset at him.
He said he was going to come back
in.
He was someone who kept his word.
And I just kept trying.
I kept trying to work with him.
We ended up working together for two
years.
He had a stroke on his dominant side.
I literally helped him handwrite and fill
out his disability paperwork.
Again, I worked with reptiles.
I was used to things wanting to bite
me when I was trying to help it.
So it didn't upset me that he was
upset at me.
I was like, okay, he needs help.
He's scared.
How do I calm him down?
What does this patient need from me?
And he needed help with disability
paperwork.
That's not in the playbook,
but you recognized it was necessary.
Because I walked in the room and said,
this organism,
this living thing needs this.
This is not personal.
It is a response to something in the
environment.
And so we worked together on and off
for two years and he is still one
of my dearest and closest friends.
So I love to tell that story to
new grads because they think that when you
come out of school,
like you don't know anything and you've
got to hide the fact that you're a
new grad and you've got to wait till
you get all the letters.
And I'm like, no,
my biggest cheerleaders to this day are
patients that I treated in that first six
months.
There are four of them that I still
stay in touch with.
And like I said,
they're my biggest cheerleaders and I have
told them I had no idea what I
was doing.
And they said, we knew,
but you figured it out.
So figure it out.
It is okay to not know what you're
doing.
Yeah.
Ryan Clark,
before we do your parting shot,
because I know you've got a meeting.
I don't want to be the reason for
a meeting.
Ryan Clark was a former NFL pro bowler.
Awesome.
Played for the Steelers and the Giants.
I saw him at a healthcare medical
conference in D.C.,
he had this i forget what the condition
was i think it might have been sickle
cell anemia he had some condition where it
was not every test he was being given
you're fine man and he's like i am
losing weight i can't get out of bed
it's like i'm a defensive back in the
nfl i can't get out of bed so
this was the team dot also you're an
nfl defensive back you have the best
doctors in the world and this one doctor
might have been great
But he was like, no, you're good.
Go ahead.
Get out of here.
And he's like,
I'm wasting away to nothing.
I think he said go out of pocket
and go to a new doctor.
And the doctors did all the same tests
and said everything came back negative.
And then Ryan Clark was like,
and he goes,
I don't know what's going on,
but we're just going to keep doing stuff
till we figure it out.
And Ryan Clark goes, that's all I wanted.
That's all they want.
Just tell me that you believe me.
Look at me.
I'm a defensive back.
I'm dripping weight.
I'm dropping weight like Creed.
Not normal.
Everything's normal.
He goes,
I don't know what's going to happen,
but we're going to keep doing it to
figure it out.
Someone just wants a wingman.
It's not an assembly line.
There's going to be a lot of typical
things in your career.
Read and recognize when it's inaudible.
See, I could do this all day.
Yes, you can.
Are you ready to do the parting shot?
Your parting shot?
Sure.
Our parting shot brought to you by Get
the Message Out,
a full service storytelling shop.
It's a small creative agency with a big
mouth.
We help healthcare professionals turn
their ideas.
into impact for podcast launches,
social media strategy.
They help you speak your truth and connect
with your audience.
And by they, I mean me.
It's my company.
I do this.
This is me.
Just drop me an email,
jimmy at ptpinecast.com.
I help APTA sections and academies do
this.
I help private practices do this.
We just help you make your good work
well known.
So your parting shot, last chance,
mic drop moment, soapbox statement.
What do you want your parting shot to
be?
I want to loop back to something you
said at the start of the podcast when
you were talking about the tangled rope.
Oh, yeah.
is what moves patients forward.
And so if we're looking at a tangled
rope and it's a small, simple knot,
many of us feel really comfortable using
our basic skills to tease that apart and
untangle the rope.
And a complex patient is not any
different.
It is a larger knot.
It is the same basic approaches.
It's the same humanity.
It's the same skills that we have been
taught since we were in PT school.
It takes longer.
which is what makes us nervous.
And sometimes we have to have people help
us hold the rope up while we're teasing
it apart.
But we do it the same way.
So try not to make really complex things
complex.
Find the simplicity in them.
Use your training and what you've learned
to do.
It just may take longer.
Mike drop.
Boom.
Faith Stokes, we'll see at CSM.
I'm going to be there.
I'm going to be doing something ridiculous
probably,
but maybe we'll recreate like where we met
because it'll be the same venue.
We'll try to figure it out.
That's exciting.
And we'll take a selfie for ten years
under the influence.
That's a decade under the influence is
what the podcast is.
That sounds fantastic.
Let's do that.
FaceDokes, appreciate the time.
Thanks for doing this.
Absolutely.
Have a great day.