Save Yourself the Frustration

You don’t know everything. Keep it that way.

See when you’re finished with PT school, you worked hard with the mindset and approach of having to know everything. To make an A grade, you needed to show on tests that you know at least 90% of the material. This is great, because the more you knowledge you have, the more tools you have to apply in clinic for your patient.

Now that you’re a new grad clinician, where you excel in a knowledge base, you lack in experience in expertly applying all that knowledge effectively and efficiently. You’ve heard it before. When you’re in clinic it’s referred to as clinical practice.

Never clinical mastery.

So despite your scholarly achievements, you’ll often times feel lost in clinic, maybe even frustrated.

I’ve scored such high scores in PT school, yet I feel like I know nothing in clinic?!

That thought is good. Be hard on yourself. In fact, being critical of your own performance is part of expert clinical practice.

To save you all the trouble and frustration, which are feelings I went through myself, you need a change in mindset.

This isn’t PT school any more. You’re not here to get an A, or any passing grade for that matter. There are no grades.

All that matters are your patients, and your patients’ eventual success through your guidance in clinic.

You need to humble yourself to know that you don’t know everything, and that’s okay.

I learned in residency a very powerful saying, which I loosely paraphrase here:

The most dangerous person in the clinic, is the clinician who thinks he/she knows everything.

Clinicians who have the closed-minded approach that they know everything there is to know about orthopaedic practice is likely practicing recklessly. This person also likely isn’t being critical of their own practice, and even implementing diagnoses and interventions with no regards to the patient presentation.

Now I’m not saying, to not do your best when learning new material. The change in mindset to a humbled approach with clinical practice is to acknowledge that there is always more to learn and that there are multiple ways to approach a patient's presentation. This is likely why some have said physical therapy is an art.

Here are some ways to have a humbled approach to your clinical practice:

1. Reach out to older colleagues for their insights, no matter what their experiences or advanced credentials they may have. Just remember to be critical of the new information, process its merits, and recognize whether it is appropriate for your patients.
2. When you encounter a new way of treatment, ask the clinician why he/she thought that treatment was appropriate for that patient and how that treatment works. Stay open minded and friendly. You may respectfully disagree, so remember to ask and talk in a non-aggressive tone for a much more healthy debate.
3. Seek out challenging continuing education and clinical experiences. Repeat #1 and #2 with other con ed attendees and the instructor.
4. Build a reading schedule for research articles. Stay realistic on what you can handle, so whatever you do, start small and stick to the schedule.
5. Build a learning culture at your clinic. If you don’t already have a journal club, start one! Doing so will already get you #1, #2, and #4 off this list, so you get more bang for your buck. Awesome.
6. Refresh yourself on existing knowledge. Usually, your knowledge will be constantly reinforced by what you encounter with your patients, but I’d recommend you take some time to go back to the literature to fill in some missing details or update your current practices