Well I’ve been here a whole year now at this fabulous physio practice – and what a year! It’s been a privilege to work with this great team. I have a real love of learning and teaching, so Nathan has seized these traits and privileged me with the responsibility of professional development and mentoring of staff – and this is awesome.
My physio knowledge and skills have certainly been very much sharpened over the last year. I have learnt a great deal from my team, but I’ve also attended a few great courses on back pain, pelvic joint pain, running, knee and hip arthritis, as well as online learning. I have instituted fortnightly team learning sessions and monthly case study reflections where we review patient files that didn’t go as well as planned (sometimes these can be hard – but always worthwhile!) This year we are expanding some of our sessions to include the girls at Wodonga Podiatry, so we can all learn together. The PBP team are also frequently given articles to read and videos to watch as I find little tit bits of information I think they need to know – we are quite busy!!
Going the extra mile to help my patients is a big part of working at Personal Best. For me that firstly means being on top of the latest knowledge in how to treat a problem. But it also means making sure I am on the same page as the doctor or surgeon – which can lead to lots of letters or phone calls. If a patient has a problem I am not experienced with, it’s not unusual for me to need to call a professional in a capital city for advice or do an extra online course.
Personally, it was initially a bit of an adjustment for me in the last year to move to full time hours from part time, but it has been helpful to get my teeth into the job a bit more. In the last year I have started running for exercise with my dog, sometimes with my husband (who is much faster than me), and often with my children on bikes. I have also increased the intensity of my weight training for joint health, so both of these have been satisfying.
I look forward to this coming year of getting better and better at helping the team learn, as well as increasing my not so fast running speed!
