The Sports Physical Therapy Academy Podcast · Dr. Chris Garcia

EP169: "Patients Won't Leave You If You Do This…"

·25 min·1 clip

Every PT can fix the winging scapula, but not every PT can get a patient backpacking pain-free through Europe.

1. The Sports Physical Therapy Academy Podcast EP169 addresses why some patients keep coming back to a physical therapist, setting aside clinical skills in favor of what Chris Garcia calls "legacy." 2. Host Chris Garcia, a physical therapist, business owner and residency-trained sports specialist, says he has scaled to three cash-based locations with 15 staff. 3. His thesis is that every PT can reduce pain, so patients remember "the quality of life that they wanted" rather than faster pain relief. 4. He opens with NFL Hall of Famer Jim Kelly, who lost four Super Bowls with the Buffalo Bills and had four bouts of jaw cancer, and who named "faith, family, fun, and the fans" as his ecosystem. 5. He borrows a motivational speaker's definition that "true wealth is about what you leave behind when you remove all the possessions," and applies it to what patients carry away after discharge. 6. He cites the "7-38-55 rule" from UCLA behavioral psychology researchers, stating that 7% of emotion comes from words, 35% from tone and 55% from body language, so two PTs using identical McKenzie and mobilization methods can get different results. 7. He tells PTs to anchor care to a patient's goal, such as skiing with a spouse, playing with kids or a Europe backpacking trip, and to document progress as "you're 75 percent of the way there." 8. He argues that patients forget the goniometer, hamstring length and "the green theraband," and that technique labels such as Mulligan certification are "irrelevant" to how patients describe care to their spouses. 9. He says PTs are mostly "analytics" who respond to data, that belief in your message is required for tone and body language to convey it, and that the alternative is the "hamster wheel of more mobilizations more CEUs." 10. Suited to PTs, new grads and clinic owners looking to improve patient retention.

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