On August 16, 2013, I was given the opportunity to address the Mercer University DPT Class of 2016 as the keynote speaker for their white coat ceremony, a beautiful event welcoming them into the profession. I wanted to share the content of my talk. I hope they heard the message and it gives them hope when things get tough!
Thank you, Dr. Taylor, Dean Lundquist, Dr. Matthews, and Dr. Swindle for giving me the opportunity to welcome Mercer University’s DPT Class of 2016.
I believe the best physical therapists are called to this profession. In fact, I believe in order to be an excellent therapist, in order to be happy and fulfilled as a PT, you must be called. Before half of you groan and get scared that I’m about to launch into a religious talk, I’m not. For me, though, the calling was very much a spiritual one, and a clear one. But I don’t expect that everyone’s story has “that moment” like mine. The story of your calling may be more subtle.
My story started when I was helped by a physical therapist in high school. My story continued when I worked in a nursing home for two years and saw the love and care that the physical therapists showed their patients. But it wasn’t until a Tuesday afternoon in July of 2006, while sitting in a meeting that I heard the calling. During a fleeting moment of frustration, I heard a voice say, “Ingrid, you need to be a physical therapist.” Now, I don’t hear voices on a regular basis thank goodness, so I figured I’d better listen. I left the meeting, went to my desk and looked up “Physical Therapy Education” Georgia State University was the first link that popped up. I made an appointment to visit GSU that day. I started my prerequisites a month later and a year after that I started PT school.
After the first two days of drinking from the fire hose that is PT school, I was wondering whether I had made the right decision. My first clinical experience was on day three of PT school at Dekalb Medical Center’s outpatient department. The PT I was supposed to shadow was out sick, so after much shuffling, waiting and consternation, I was sent to follow Tim McMahon, who happens to now be Dr. McMahon, member of this faculty, and the Director of Mercer’s Physical Therapy Faculty practice. I had no idea who he was. I knew he was busy. Reaaaally busy. He asked how far along I was in school, and I told him. Day Three. “Welllllll,” he said, smiling, “Keep your eyes open and try to stay out of the way.” I watched that day while he treated 16 patients. He didn’t get done until 7 PM. I watched him evaluate. I watched him educate. I watched him perform manual therapy interventions. I watched him, counsel. I might have even handed him a towel. I saw people come in hurting and leave smiling. I was in awe. As I left his clinic at the end of that day, I was convinced that the call I had heard was real and tangible and that this was what I was meant to do.
If I asked each of you “why are you here,” I would get number different answers, but I bet that none of you would tell me “I couldn’t think of anything else to do with my exercise science degree.” I bet most of you would tell me a story. Maybe your story started with a summer job as a tech in an outpatient clinic, where you saw a 17-year-old football player come in on crutches and come back to visit a few months later to hug his PT before leaving for college on a full scholarship. Or maybe your story would be about your mom who had a total knee replacement and it was the PT who actually showed her WHAT was done to her knee, and helped her get back to doubles’ tennis. Or maybe your grandfather had a stroke, and without the hard work he did with his PT he would never have been able to come home.
But I bet for many of you the story is even more personal. Maybe you are an athlete. A dancer. A musician. And maybe you never thought you would play again until your physical therapist gave you hope and then showed you what you needed to do to return to full function.
At some point or many points over the next three years, you will completely lose sight of why you are here. You will be overwhelmed with new knowledge and data and facts and numbers. And no matter HOW good your professors are and no matter HOW much they try and tie it back to the patient, you will feel frustration and fear and wonder why you ever decided to do this.
I’m guessing that most of you have never failed at anything you’ve truly tried for. That HAS to be true for you to have even made it into this program. But guess what, that winning streak is about to end. You will fail competencies and have to retake practical exams. You will study your pants off for an exam and get to question three and realize that NONE of the material looks familiar. You will probably cry once or twice. Or a lot. Your family and friends will worry because they never see you anymore. You will consider quitting.
But then you will go out on a short clinical rotation, or a service-learning activity, or treat a patient in class. And you will realize, Well, I am learning! I do know something! This is the reason I am here. But it won’t be until you go out on the long-term clinical rotations that you will believe again, fully, completely and without a doubt that this is what you were called to do.
My first long-term clinical rotation was treating mainly patients with neurological problems in an inpatient rehab unit in a hospital in Savannah, GA. During my first week of clinic, my son got sick and I missed two days, my husband fell down the stairs and had to be taken to the ER, then immediately left me to go back to Atlanta, and I got deathly ill and passed out on the floor of the hospital. It was not a good week. The Friday of that first week, I sat in the courtyard of the hospital, and I was struck by how beautiful it was. While I cried and thought, “I can’t do this, what was I thinking?” I saw one of the PTs bring a patient down to the courtyard in her wheelchair. The PT helped the woman walk the garden, asking periodically about the various plants and flowers. Then helped the woman back into her wheelchair and left. That PT could have easily practiced gait over uneven surfaces in the clinic or the hallway, but instead took advantage of a rare day of nice weather to show her patient a small kindness that may or may not have ever been noticed or rewarded. And in that moment I was reminded AGAIN that this is what I was called to do.
Being called has its downsides too. People who are called can get burned out. They can care so much about their patients that they sometimes forget to care for themselves and their families. Sometimes we might feel that we have more power than we really do. We congratulate ourselves too easily when outcomes are good and flagellate ourselves too easily when things don’t go well. We have high, sometimes unrealistic, expectations of others.
You don’t know it now, and you won’t until you have licensed and are practicing, but because you will be Mercer grads, you will have a leg up on your colleagues. If you listen, your faculty will teach you how to avoid reaching burnout. They will tell you how to recognize and avoid being sucked in to situations you can’t control. And how to know what you don’t know. And most of all how to take care of you while you are taking care of others.
Over and over again during school and your career you will hear about the changing healthcare environment, reducing payments for our skills, increased regulation, blah blah blah. AAAAnd – This is my personal favorite – the so-called “good old days” when physical therapists could do whatever treatment or modality du jour and get paid for it, even if it didn’t work. For those poor individuals for whom this profession is not their calling, these changes are an opportunity for whining, complaining or giving up. But for those of us who are called, we are a part of these changes.
So maybe your calling will be to fight those changes that damage patient care by becoming active in local, state or federal advocacy. Maybe your calling will be to work through our professional organizations to ensure that PTs understand these changes. Maybe your calling will be to be a researcher and develop evidence-based tests and treatments. Or maybe your calling will be to be a good therapist, a great therapist, who uses that evidence to treat his patients and truly cares.
I want you to know now that you won’t always feel called. But you are. And since you are called do this, when the exams are hard and you are frustrated and angry or overwhelmed you will persevere. And you will reach out to your classmates and help them to do the same. Because if you were truly called either by something spiritual and external, or by your own internal drive, quitting isn’t an option.
I spent much of PT school feeling like I had made a terrible mistake. But I have not had one single moment of doubt since becoming a practicing physical therapist. I welcome you to this next step in fulfilling your calling. It will be challenging, and it will be worth it.
