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Shadow Me Next!
Shadow Me Next! is a podcast where we take you behind the scenes of the medical world. I'm Ashley Love, a Physician Assistant, and I will be sharing my journey in medicine and exploring the lives of various healthcare professionals. Each episode, I'll interview doctors, NPs, PAs, nurses, and allied health workers, uncovering their unique stories, the joys and challenges they face, and what drives them in their careers. Whether you're a pre-med student or simply curious about the healthcare field, we invite you to join us as we take a conversational and personal look into the lives and minds of leaders in Medicine. Access you want, stories you need. You're always invited to Shadow Me Next!
Shadow Me Next!
9 - Grading the Health of Healthcare and Navigating the Challenges of Medicine: Insights from a Doctor of Physical Therapy | Lauren Atkins, DPT
What if our healthcare system is fundamentally flawed? Join us as we explore this provocative question with Dr. Lauren Atkins, a board-certified orthopedic specialist and co-owner of Gainesville Wellness and Performance Physical Therapy. With a doctorate in physical therapy and certification in manual therapy, Lauren brings a wealth of knowledge to the table, sharing her journey through the educational landscape and the financial hurdles that come with it. She offers a fresh perspective on the collaborative spirit of physical therapy, where diagnostic skills meet hands-on treatment to create a holistic healing experience, and discusses the integration of massage therapy for a comprehensive approach to patient care.
Listen in as Lauren reveals the intricacies of a physical therapist's day, from addressing common ailments like low back pain to maintaining career satisfaction amidst the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. We also delve into the career trajectories available to physical therapy assistants and the importance of a supportive professional network. This episode is rich with insights into the dynamics of professional collaboration and the shared experiences of healthcare providers, making it a must-listen for anyone curious about the inner workings of physical therapy and the broader healthcare landscape.
For more about Dr. Lauren Atkins and her practice, please visit her website: https://www.gwpfit.com/
Virtual shadowing is an important tool to use when planning your medical career. At Shadow Me Next! we want to provide you with the resources you need to find your role in healthcare and secure your place in medicine.
Check out our pre-health resources. Great for pre-med, pre-PA, pre-nursing, pre-therapy students or anyone else with an upcoming interview!
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Hello and welcome to Shadow Me Next, a podcast where I take you into and behind the scenes of the medical world to provide you with a deeper understanding of the human side of medicine. I'm Ashley, a physician assistant and the creator of Shadow Me Next. It's my goal to introduce you to incredible members of the healthcare field and uncover their unique stories, the joys and challenges they face and what drives them in their careers. It's access you want and stories you need, whether you're a pre-med student or simply curious about the healthcare field. I invite you to join me as we take a conversational and personal look into the lives and minds of leaders in medicine. I don't want you to miss a single one of these conversations, so make sure that you subscribe to this podcast, which will automatically notify you when new episodes are dropped, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Shadow Me Next, where I'll give you sneak previews of our upcoming guests.
Ashley:Welcome to episode nine of Shadow Me Next. I am so happy to introduce you to Dr Lauren Atkins, a doctor of physical therapy board certified orthopedic specialist and co-owner of Gainesville Wellness and Performance Physical Therapy. In this episode, lauren raises and answers pivotal questions for our pre-health students and patients alike. She highlights finding environments and people that help build you up as medical clinicians and stresses the importance of being surrounded by those who uplift and positively challenge you. She also details the collaborative environment of physical therapy and her role as a physical therapist and business owner. Most uniquely, she discusses the tremendous cost of medical education and provides insights on how to intelligently dialogue about this financial burden. Poignantly, lauren raises an important question Is our healthcare system broken? Join us as we perform a temperature check on healthcare and discuss what the future of medicine may hold.
Ashley:This is Shadow Me Next with Dr Lauren Atkins. Hi, lauren, thank you so much for joining us on Shadow Me. Next with Dr Lauren Atkins. Hi Lauren, thank you so much for joining us on Shadow Me Next. I am thrilled to have you on the show today.
Dr. Lauren Atkins:Thank you so much for having me.
Ashley:I'm excited to be here, fantastic. So, lauren, you have so many certifications and I'm really, really excited for you to explain all of these to us. Can you tell us a little bit about your education? So you are a board certified orthopedic specialist and you received both your doctorate in physical therapy and a certification in manual therapy. What does all that mean? Tell us all about it.
Dr. Lauren Atkins:Yeah. So I went to the University of St Augustine for PT school and I think it was a really important choice for me because that program allowed me to take coursework while I was in my graduate program towards my manual therapy certification and then after graduation you sit for it's a week long of tests, so it's a total of I want to say like 21 tests, written practical exams and oral exams that you're giving. So that is just making sure that you have a strong base of knowledge in joint mobilizations, myofascial release, kind of a lot of what the patients think of as like the hands-on work that therapists do. And then my board certification in orthopedics. You take that every 10 years because surgeries are always changing, procedures are always changing, and that is a very long written exam that you go and you sit for and it creates a really strong knowledge base in diagnosing, like kind of through provocative tests you're diagnosing. Of course we can't order imaging, that's not in our scope of practice but it gives me a good knowledge base on the best evidence-based practice for ortho.
Ashley:That is incredible. You have mentioned so many terms there that just sound so interesting to me as a medical professional, but it probably sounds really terrifying to people. So things like joint mobilizations and myofascial release and provocative tests I mean it's amazing to me that physical therapists are able to do these pretty intense things with the body but also, at the same time, make your patients feel very comfortable about it. Have you found that that's the case? Are your patients generally pretty worried about coming to physical therapy or do they kind of bounce in just excited and happy to be?
Dr. Lauren Atkins:there. Yeah, I think we get all of the above. I work in a practice that we do end up with some patients that have had bad experiences other places and so I would say maybe they're cautious or maybe fearful to try PT again, but they're still in pain, so they're trying to find out what that answer will be to get them back to whatever they want to functionally do with their body. But then we also have a lot of people that are just like hey, I heard about your practice and I want to improve my running, and they're not even injured, they're just coming in because they want to optimize their body. So we get a vast kind of patient group in our practice.
Ashley:That's awesome. You know, so far, physical therapy sounds like this beautiful combination of diagnostics so you're given a question and you're trying to find the answer, and then also hands-on work. So you know, it's not just sitting there in a think tank trying to come up with why your patients are having an issue, right, you actually get hands-on work. So you know, it's not just sitting there in a think tank trying to come up with why your patients are having an issue, right, you actually get hands-on and you're working with them, and I think that's incredible. You know, I think that one of the most well-rounded areas in practice, especially in medicine, is where you get to use both your brain and your hands, and I'm so glad to hear that physical therapy is an outlet for that and you can do that as well. So tell us what inspired you to pursue a career in physical therapy initially? Did you always know that you wanted to be a physical therapist?
Dr. Lauren Atkins:No, I didn't. So I grew up playing a lot of volleyball. I knew that I wanted to do something in healthcare and my grandfather was a MD. He was a cardiothoracic surgeon and was never home. So I was like that seems like I don't want to do that. You know, it's just that surgeon life is all consuming. But I really loved orthopedics and so I thought maybe I wanted to go to PA school, maybe I wanted to go to PT school.
Dr. Lauren Atkins:And I hurt myself playing volleyball and I ended up at one of my teammates dad's offices. He was a orthodoc and he was like well, I'm going to send you to PT because it's mid season, you really need surgery. It's not going to work, but I know you're not going to stop playing mid season, so we'll just try it and see what happens. And I got better and I was like, wow, this is something that I think that I might want to do. And I did some shadowing at a clinic. It was the OSMI clinic at UF, off of 34th. So they see, you know all kinds of stuff and there was also a really awesome hand therapist over there that would let me sit in with her a lot. So that was kind of how I got into it and more exposure to it.
Ashley:Shadowing is great, isn't it?
Dr. Lauren Atkins:Yes, it is.
Ashley:I'm so grateful that you got that shadowing experience. Do you think that shadowing helped direct you to where you're at right now? Do you think it's worth shadowing? I know some people, you know some people say if you can get it, get it. If you can't get it, no big deal. I know my experience with shadowing and I'm curious to know what you think about your shadowing experience.
Dr. Lauren Atkins:I think it's vital for any individual that is about to spend a ton of money and time going into a profession to shadow, because if you don't like it, you're screwed that is exactly right.
Dr. Lauren Atkins:You're coming out with tons and tons of debt. My best friend is an attorney and she does not like being an attorney and has kind of found ways to make that work for her. But she didn't have a choice after she graduated to go back and find something new, because she came out of school with $80,000 in student loans and that was low compared to a lot of people. So I think it's a must.
Ashley:It is. I agree with you and I love the fact that you tied finances into this, because the financial burden of going to school is gargantuan and I think that you can pivot in certain times. But, like you said you mentioned, your grandfather was a cardiothoracic surgeon. That's like 15 plus years of schooling physical therapy, pa. It's less schooling but the financial burden is still so great. So I agree with you Shadowing it just gives you a glimpse of that lifestyle and shadowing isn't going to train you medically.
Ashley:You know you're not going to leave your shadowing experience knowing how to perform a myofascial release or, in my case, how to close a hole in somebody's face with sutures, but you're going to get an idea of the workflow. You're going to get an idea of how the clinician addresses the patient, their patient relationship, and you're going to be able to talk to that person and say are you happy with what you do, lord, you might not even have to talk to them. You can maybe just tell if they're happy doing what they do. So it's really just, it's a bird's eye view, but it's something that is. I think it is so important, lauren, when you were during your education, when you're being trained, was there anything that any moment that you thought oof this wasn't right. You know, maybe I didn't do, maybe I didn't make the right decision, or did you always know that you were on the right path?
Dr. Lauren Atkins:I always knew that I was on the right path. I had some experiences throughout my schooling and throughout my clinical rotations that I thought, okay, I don't want to be this kind of therapist or I don't want to work in this setting, but I always felt like PT was the right path.
Ashley:That's amazing. What were those experiences when you felt like, ooh, this oof, I don't want. I don't want this part of physical therapy?
Dr. Lauren Atkins:So I my outpatient orthopedic clinical rotation that I ended up really enjoying. The first two weeks were awful, what the education was and, and he would constantly quiz me in front of patients about things that I hadn't learned yet. I never asked him. My thought would be that, you know, he was trying to push me and trying to grow and that hopefully it came from a good place and I left every day from that clinical crying because I just felt like I was so over my head, I couldn't succeed and I learned.
Dr. Lauren Atkins:It has shaped a lot of how I have taught people over the years, but also how I interact with all of my colleagues at the office and how I give feedback, because I think that we have to lift each other up and that makes us more confident with patients and patients feel safer and they feel that they're going to get better and outcomes improve If we're giving that confidence of, hey, I'm Lauren and I can help you. And so that was one of those scenarios where I was just like, oh, this doesn't feel good. I had a clinical rotation at Putnam Community Hospital, which was just a really sad experience of a lot of people that had really hard lives and kind of the social impact of poverty on our health. That was a difficult clinical rotation. I mean lots of awesome, wonderful people and just seeing individuals that were sick and in a system that really wasn't working for them and the chances of them getting well again were so slim.
Ashley:You know this is such a good lesson because, especially as a student and I think we're technically we're still students, right, working in medicine, but really as new students, as students who are actively learning and working towards their degrees this is a good lesson because all experiences that we have are helpful experiences, the good ones and the bad ones, right, and you know it can be, I think, as a student, it can be incredibly overwhelming when you are enduring the bad experiences. Whether it's because of a bad, a bad preceptor, which is a person that you're working with that's supposed to be training you and mentoring you and helping you succeed or grow, those experiences can be overwhelming. Some of the patients we work with, like you said, the social impact of poverty, seeing that impact on our health, is very overwhelming and very, very sad. But all of those experiences, good or bad, are helpful and they do shape us as clinicians and they do help us hopefully make a bigger, better impact on, like you said, on our patients, on our practice.
Ashley:So I really I do try to encourage you know we'll have students come in who are PA students and they'll be describing their last rotation and we know that our office is a safe place. We really love our students and we want to see them succeed and we want to help them develop that clinical confidence that they need. But I try to encourage them because I think all of us have walked away from a rotation crying at some point or the other. It is overwhelming and it does sometimes make you question am I strong enough for this? Is this for me? Is this what every day is going to feel like? And it's not. You have to. We take it as a learning opportunity and we also take it as this is not where I want to be, or perhaps this is not who I want to work with, so I'm so glad you brought that up.
Ashley:That's a fantastic lesson for anybody, not only students, but also in life. You know you should be surrounded by people who want to uplift you and challenge you in ways that will build you up, not tear you down.
Dr. Lauren Atkins:Absolutely. We only know we've got this moment.
Ashley:So, lauren, this is a point in our conversation where I ask you about a quality question. Is there a question that really stands out in your brain as one that was exceptionally interesting, or perhaps a question that you enjoy asking those that you're interviewing yourself?
Dr. Lauren Atkins:I like to ask what was the last time that you had conflict and how did you handle it? Pertaining to the workplace, you know if we're interviewing someone that is looking to come on board at the clinic. I think that's a really important question because it shows problem solving. But also for me in our office, communication is vital and it lets me know kind of how they communicate around difficult situations.
Ashley:That's great. Tell me your challenges, or tell me something that challenged you. Recently is such a common question, but I love the fact that you spin it to explain a recent conflict, because conflict, that is a challenge. It's an interpersonal challenge, right, and we work in such a strong interpersonal work environment with our other colleagues, and conflict resolution is a humongous skill that people don't just have innately, I don't think and it allows you to see if somebody is going to be able to reach common ground in a way that is forward thinking and helpful to the practice, helpful for the patient. Speaking about working as a team, lauren, you are the co-owner of Gainesville Wellness and Performance Physical Therapy. You work with a team of other professionals. There's other physical therapists, physical therapy assistants and massage therapists too. What does professional collaboration look like for you in physical therapy?
Dr. Lauren Atkins:Well, we and our clinic are all one-on-one patient care, so that means that when you come in you're with the same therapist every time. What that looks like in our clinic with physical therapy assistants is we still want that same continuity and so when we have a physical therapy assistant or PTA working with a patient for follow-ups, they sit in on the initial evaluation. So traditionally in an outpatient orthopedic practice you're with the physical therapist for the eval and then you may get handed off to a PTA or a tech. They weren't there, they didn't hear your history, they didn't see your range of motion, they didn't see the functional testing of motion. They didn't see the functional testing, and to me that's so important. So it's a big difference in our clinic than any other clinic that I know of.
Dr. Lauren Atkins:On how we work with PTAs, and I think it also really is so important for the PT, but more so the PTA, to come in. They've built this relationship from the beginning with the patient rather than having to like, okay, I reviewed your chart and I do know what I'm talking about. You know it's really difficult when they weren't there for the whole initial evaluation. So that's how we work with the PTAs. With the massage therapists, we add in massage as needed. So if I were sending you to our massage therapist and I was also seeing you for PT, I have a meeting with the massage therapist beforehand, and so I'm like, okay, this is what Ashley's got going on. You know she's a tennis player and she's got a shoulder issue. So you know, sophie may say to me oh well, I know you mentioned subscapularis, but I also found a lot of tightness in pec minor, and so that way we're collaborating, we're always getting information from each other and it's to me always better to have more sets of eyes on a situation.
Ashley:Absolutely. I love that to a degree you both have a very good understanding of that patient and of that patient's concerns. That it sounds like you are really focusing maybe on different elements and you're able to highlight some of those specific elements and explain that to each other A bigger, better, more whole picture of what that patient's concerns are.
Dr. Lauren Atkins:Yeah, and massage is such a great tool to have access to in pairing with physical therapy, because they're going and they're working more slowly, they're warming up the fascia, they're really taking their time. Not that we don't in PT, and we don't have as much time, though, because we're trying to get the exercise portion and the myofascial work done in one session, so it's nice to have that as a little extra.
Ashley:Absolutely, lauren. Let me ask you a question, because this is a question I get as a PA a lot, and it's an honest, sincere question. But I think sometimes it can feel as a PA, it can feel like a put down. Patients will say, ashley, you're a physician assistant, when are you going to go back and finish your degree? Okay, well then, it allows, it opens the door for patient education. I get to tell them about what a PA does and how I have completed my degree. I'm at the end of my schooling. This is where I want to be. This is where I want to be. This is where I want to work. To your knowledge, do your physical therapy assistants and or massage therapists have they reached the end of their career training as well, or do many of them go on to?
Dr. Lauren Atkins:becoming a physical therapist, for example. It's a good question and that's something we dialogue about. I think some of the PTAs that we have they're good, you know, and they're like two of them they're not planning on furthering their career. One of them she, either wants to go back to PT school or she wants to become a PA. So we were talking about that. I meet with all of the staff once a week. We have weekly meetings where I'm one-on-one with them, and she wants to go back to school. She's not quite sure yet.
Dr. Lauren Atkins:A big part of the dialogue her and I have been having is cost. You know, it's like she's really worried about going back to PT school because she thinks that the amount that she will make coming out of PT school won't really match the amount of debt that she's going to take on. And she's not wrong no, she's not wrong. She knows she wants to be in healthcare, but it's sad to me because she's a great therapist and in the long run we may end up losing her to becoming a PA, which is awesome, and you know she's so talented with exercise and all of those things. I don't know what the answer is with the cost of education and how much healthcare workers get paid, but there's definitely some problems to be solved there.
Ashley:Absolutely, and whatever she decides, she will be positively impacting her patients, obviously, and that's the goal for all of us as healthcare providers. But at the same time, we are investing a significant amount of money and time into our schooling, and you can't live on love. You can't live on the love of your patient. So I think that the experience that she's gotten as a physical therapy assistant, if she becomes a physical therapist obviously it's directly relatable it's gonna make her an amazing PT. If she becomes a PA, she has a phenomenal arsenal under her belt of things that most PAs are not going to know.
Ashley:So I think that variety in healthcare is amazing and I've actually spoken with nurse practitioners who say they wish that there was this amalgamation of a provider. Right, maybe they went to nursing school first and then, instead of becoming a doctorate of nursing practice, then they went and became a PA and that would be the perfect person, and perhaps before that they were a physical therapy assistant. You know, and I think that, yes, ideally, the more variety of schooling you have, the more variety of schooling you have, the more well-rounded a provider you'll be. But we can't afford that. That's so much money. Thank you for explaining that. I think that that's a great thing to consider. For people you know, being a physical therapy assistant is a career, being a massage therapist is a career. Being a PA is a career. We don't necessarily have to step into the next realm unless we feel really drawn to it which I think I honestly I think the nursing model really has done that very beautifully.
Ashley:So we'll see what happens with all of that. Lauren, do most PTs start their own practice, or is this something that's pretty unique?
Dr. Lauren Atkins:no-transcript. And then I also wonder sometimes if it's just my confirmation bias that you know, because whether it's patients or providers, they're kind of getting out of that system and we're creating our own system that works in a more efficient way to not abuse health care providers and to provide better patient care. I think we're going to see more of it healthcare providers and to provide better patient care.
Ashley:I think we're going to see more of it. So interesting Speaking to so many different providers in different realms identifying themes in medicine, right? So, once upon a time, burnout was a huge theme. Everybody was talking about burnout. Everybody's still talking about burnout and I think we're more aware of it and we have focused tools and programs to help alleviate burnout. It's still hugely, unfortunately, hugely common, but we're aware of it. You know this.
Ashley:This issue is direct primary care and it is an amazing concept the fact that you surpass and bypass insurance and you have more accessibility to your clinician, more accessibility, more accessibility. You are not paying an absurd amount of money to an insurance company that's going to dictate what you do, how you do it, the prescriptions that you can write, et cetera, the imaging that you can order. It's a really interesting theme and I'm really glad you brought that up. I think that seeing that theme across all areas of medicine will be something to keep your eye on and I think it's going to pop up in interviews a lot. I think that it's going to be a really common interview question talking about the changes in healthcare when it comes to insurance and when it comes to what that looks like Somebody's got to fix it.
Dr. Lauren Atkins:I totally, absolutely. And I mean we as providers are so much happier being able to treat the whole person rather than when I worked in an insurance based practice. It was like, okay, your insurance approved your right shoulder, so I can't touch your neck, I can't work on your rib cage, which is insane to me, because the scapula interacts with the ribs and the thoracic spine and they all move together. You know, it's just like trying to work with handcuffs on and I'm so glad to be able to just do what I need to do for my patient. But when you're trying to explain to an insurance company why you're doing foot and ankle exercises and mobilizations, that can be difficult Not impossible, but difficult.
Ashley:Oh, absolutely Absolutely. And I think that, for the patient too, it takes a minute to explain to them why you're manipulating their foot for their back pain. You know, my husband always jokes I always complain about back pain. Of course everybody does and he'll say well, are your hamstrings stretched? Well, no, what does that have to do with my back? Then we get into the whole thing. You know, and and I think as number one is athletes and number two as medical providers, I think we have a little bit more of an intimate understanding of how all of those things are connected. But yeah, explaining it to somebody who's sitting behind a desk making, you know, check marks and check boxes, it's not great care. It really is not great care. So that's awesome. Speaking of care, let's jump into practice. This is what most people want to hear about. What do you do as a physical therapist? So tell us about what a day in your life looks like. You know, you step into the office, you get going right away. What is your day? What can we expect?
Dr. Lauren Atkins:So for me, like a normal patient care day, I will usually see three or four patients and then either have some meetings or go and do like a lunch and learn or in-service kind of thing, and then I'll come back and see patients in the afternoon. I really have a wide variety of patients. I have a nine-year-old that I'm working with and then I have a 90-year-old that I'm working with. So I think that's a really fun part about both of our jobs that we get all different types of people, and that's been really awesome for me and I'm an extreme extrovert so I love all of that human interaction.
Dr. Lauren Atkins:It's super important for me. We're always assessing, we're always looking at. If someone comes in for an eval, I'm doing manual muscle tests to see where they're strong or weak. I'm doing range of motion testing and the most important part is functional testing. So we're looking at their gait, we're looking at how they squat. If they're an athlete, I'm asking them to bring videos from lacrosse practice so I can see what's happening with the hip when they're shooting. It's constant assessment, constant problem solving of what's causing the issue.
Ashley:I love the variety in that I'm sure every day is not like the last and will not be like the next, and that variety is it probably helps. You know, you don't get so-and-so, you don't get bored. What types of conditions do you most commonly treat, would you say?
Dr. Lauren Atkins:whole bunch of ankle patients and it seems like everyone is spraining their ankles and then everyone has neck pain and I'll have a lot of cervical spine or low back pain patients. So it really waxes and wanes and I don't know why. Overall, I would say our biggest patient population is low back pain and neck pain. We spend more money on healthcare for low back pain. I think the last time I looked at the stat it was like $2.2 billion a year in this country. So it's like, like you said, everybody's back hurts at some point.
Ashley:It's so true, and I think that back pain is so multifactorial, so multifactorial and you know, sometimes it's weight, sometimes it's gait, sometimes it's position and what we're doing, and everybody wants a quick fix and I'm sure you understand how everybody wants a quick fix. But it takes work to get healthy and then it takes work to maintain that health. And I think when it comes to your body and your body's physical function, how it's moving, it's way more obvious than if we're talking about your liver or perhaps your lungs or even your heart.
Ashley:We have to get healthy, but then we have to maintain that health. And yes, it is so interesting that you said your patients kind of come in waves. We do see that, and it's strange because ours involves biopsying and people can't get together and all determine that today we're going to all have basal cells in cancer. It's an interesting medical phenomenon, it is. So let's talk a little bit about career satisfaction. I can tell just by the way that you're speaking about your specialty and your career and your practice that you love what you do. Is that true?
Dr. Lauren Atkins:Absolutely A hundred percent. I think. As a physical therapist, I love what I do. As a clinic owner, I love what I do. I get asked a lot like when will you stop practicing, as our business continues to grow, and I always respond hopefully never. You know, I'm doing this because I love it, I'm not doing it because I have to, and I hope for everyone that they find something that they feel like that, where it fills them up every day.
Ashley:Have you faced challenges in your career? I mean, has it always been rainbows and butterflies, and motivating and passionate?
Dr. Lauren Atkins:No, but it was pretty, pretty terrible for all of us, right? And so my husband is one of my business partners and then our other business partner is his business partner, so the two of them own the gym next door to us and that was where the clinic started. And then we outgrew that space and we moved next door and we separated the two businesses, and so when COVID happened, I had my daughter in October of 2019. And the day that we closed the clinic because of COVID and the gym was the first day that we had gotten patient visits up to where they were before I went on maternity leave and then, we were closing for the unforeseeable future and I was on my front porch crying, having a glass of wine and just like I have no idea what is going to happen.
Dr. Lauren Atkins:But no one knew what was going to happen, you know. So it was. It was hard, but you're not alone in it. Whether it's and there's lots, I mean, that's a good example, but there's lots of times that it's hard, and I think it's really important to have friends that are in healthcare, to have friends that are business owners, because they know what you're going through. As much as we can commiserate with each other, and that's super helpful to have that network.
Ashley:Absolutely Everybody talks about a network of providers that benefit their patients, but a network of providers benefits us as well as clinicians and as people who care for others and absolutely as business owners.
Ashley:I think that that's just a whole nother element that we could get into the ins and outs of owning a business that takes care of other people. It's very challenging, but thank you, thank you for sharing that, and you know the challenges might be hard and they might feel insurmountable, but you have made it this far and you will overcome this. You know we all have creative thinking skills and that's what you need sometimes, especially when it comes to something catastrophic like COVID.
Ashley:So, lauren, thank you so much for joining us. Let's wrap up with some advice. Do you have any advice for students who are considering a career in physical therapy or really any other healthcare field?
Dr. Lauren Atkins:I think getting as much experience in different types of settings as you can, because we all think like, okay, I want to go into this or I want to go into that. And then you experience outpatient ortho or inpatient rehab and you're like, wow, I didn't know, I would like this as much as I do. We see that a lot with students shadowing in our clinic because our clinic is so different than others that they're like, wow, you know, I was at another outpatient site and they saw so many patients an hour and you guys really get to connect and be right there with your patient the whole time, and so they didn't even know that that could exist. And I think just getting as much experience and opportunity as you can is so vital.
Ashley:I agree. I agree Because as you enter your career and as you enter your schooling, even before your career the opportunities become fewer and fewer to do that sort of thing. Like God, could you imagine getting to go shadow somebody right now as a clinician and I mean that would be so fun. I would love to jump into the OR and shadow. You know your grandfather is a cardiothoracic surgeon. That sounds amazing. Is that what I want to do with my life? Absolutely not, but the experience would be incredible, I think still. So, that's great advice and I think it's something for students to really consider.
Ashley:It can be something virtual, like what we're doing here on Shadow Me Next, and it can also help lead you to realizing where you maybe want to investigate further and try to get shadowing experience in person, which is hard to come by, but definitely still possible. Lauren, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to talk with us. This has been an incredible conversation, especially about the current temperature of medicine right now and perhaps what the future might look like. I appreciate your insight so much, thank you.
Dr. Lauren Atkins:Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Ashley:Thank you so very much for listening to this episode of Shadow Me Next. If you liked this episode or if you think it could be useful for a friend, please subscribe and invite them to join us next Monday, as always. If you have any questions, let me know on Facebook or Instagram Access. You want stories you need? You're always invited to shadow me next.
