Mentorship (Part 4): Creating an Amazing Mentorship Program

This podcast will help you to become more confident with your patients , more successful in your practice or business and a leader in pelvic health , and we're going to have some fun along the way . Join us as we rise together .

We're Jesse and Nicole Cozine , founders of Pelvic Sanity Physical Therapy and the creators of the Pelvic PT Huddle , and this is Pelvic PT Rising .

Today we're talking to you , employers or people who are thinking about hiring . So I'm really excited to close out on this note , nicole . This is something we have gotten wrong a lot . We've improved a lot and now I feel really proud about what we offer at Pelvic Sanity .

We do tell a story about how early days of Pelvic Sanity when I first started having employees , we were growing like gangbusters , all the things , and I was shocked to hear that people that worked for me did not think that we had a mentorship program , because I was feeling like we totally did and it was a big , huge growth moment for me .

I had a little bit of a knee-jerk reaction to be like what the fuck are you talking about ? Of course we have a mentorship program . What's wrong with you ? And after some reflection was like huh , we've had a big communication problem on what mentorship is . We have a different definition of it . We do go over that in some of the previous episodes .

So go back and check that out If you are an employee , and this may give you a little insight into your employer's brain as well . So we're spilling the tea here .

There's no paywall , there's no nothing . It is just out there . One thing that we have seen a ton of from those of you guys who are practice owners it might be listening now is the need to get your name out there . If you are hiring , if you have been in our position , you have tried really expensive things that didn't work .

You've been on Indeed and paid hundreds of dollars for an applicant who wasn't even qualified , didn't even know what pelvic PT was , who had just graduated from a place in Timbuktu and tried to get a job at your place . Then you ended up paying a couple hundred bucks for that application .

Or you've been on like a Herman Wallace directory where no one is looking for jobs . We wanted to make this an easy thing and that's been an overwhelming response for you guys . So if you are an employer and you are looking to hire , we now have a hiring directory feature on that map . It ends up being 25 bucks a month .

You get your name out there and you know once you're hiring , you're always hiring . So that is a really cool option for you guys . So check that out . You can find it to put your information on or to get on our hiring directory at pelvicptrisingcom slash map . Nicole , did I miss anything ?

We had a practitioner map going on in there which was awesome , and then one amazing hudler accidentally messed it up and it didn't allow people to add . It erased a bunch of people , and it was at the time when we couldn't put that on a priority list .

And now we can and we have , and so we were like let's blow this shit up , let's just make it super awesome .

What would be amazing if it was free , if anybody could put their name on it , if public rehab providers could go there and learn where they could give their patients , and also , if you're hiring or you want to do practice , you put your practice on there as well , and then you can toggle on and off for cash-based practices , which we feel no

surprise . Here is the future of not only physical therapy , but public physical therapy and pelvic rehab in general . There is not going to be a world in which insurance companies are all of a sudden being like you know what ? You guys , we've been getting it wrong this whole time . We would love to increase your reimbursement .

Do you see that , jesse , in our future ?

That is the system that we have decided to adopt . That is where it is going to be going . That's where it's been going for the last 30 years and that's the future . If you want to stick with that model , I feel like we're in the matrix , where everybody knows what's going to happen and we just are , like some people are just kind of okay with it .

Our reimbursement just continues to get cut and our jobs keep getting farmed out to PTAs or to AIDs . Okay , I guess we'll just take that . I guess because that's why we got a fucking doctorate .

You can toggle on and off to search with what you want people that are hiring , people that are hiring in cash practices and just overall , a major , major , major map of all public rehab providers . That is free . I'm excited about that . Add yourself publicptrisingcom forward slash map .

This is something that is super important to the way that people do their jobs , and if you don't have a mentorship program , you're going to put yourself behind the eight ball when it comes to hiring , recruitment , retention , all of those things that matter so much to us as we do it Not to mention .

It's probably just the right thing to do in order to mention make sure that people come into your practice , get good care .

In a growing field there are going to be a variety of experience levels of practitioners and therefore , as an employer , is your responsibility to help make sure that everybody is getting good , great pelvic floor rehab and that is going to take , especially for a new grad or someone that is honestly less than five years of pelvic rehab experience .

That's going to take some extensive mentoring and even beyond that , anybody can learn . We want people at our clinic and I feel like I want people in our field to adopt the mentality that there is always learning to be had .

There is never a point when you know everything , when you don't need to be rediving into the research or other new technologies or new things or new applications for something that's old , as we're seeing kind of with modalities and tens and all kinds of stuff . It's just really important to invest in your people as people and also as public health providers .

It's one of the reasons that one of the three pillars of what we teach in the accelerator program is clinical excellence . You can't have a thriving practice if you're not providing great care and giving people a great product and one that's similar , despite whoever they see at your practice .

So if they see PT1 , OT2 , PT3 , PT4 , that the outcome is , we know is going to be good , regardless of who they see , and that responsibility is on the employer .

No one likes feeling that they can't go someplace for answers , and so if you're looking for reasons for burnout and frustration and job hopping in our field , look no further than feeling like you're doing a crappy job with your patients . That sucks .

I mean , if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black , I don't know what is . Us pelvic rehab providers are completely like this as well . We are perfectionists . We're people pleasers . For the most part , we don't wanna do anything wrong , we don't wanna look dumb and we want to do a good job . We got into this field to help people . We wanna help people .

If we're not helping people and objectively in public health it's difficult , because people are complex , not only in their symptom presentation but in their own personalities and with their nervous systems in a mess , like all of that stuff makes for a very complex patient , and that can be just being in the clinic .

Saying hi to a patient that is can't sit down can be very overwhelming . And you can't expect a new grad or even somebody that's new to pelvic health and has a ton of experience in rehab . You can't expect them to just walk in and be able to handle all that goes along with treating pelvic pain , pelvic rehab patients and pregnancy , postpartum , all the things .

There is no such thing as a simple patient .

But here's the fourth reason that I want you guys to remember is that this is one of the best ways to compete with the big box employers .

And if you really take again the crystal ball we've been talking about looking at what the future of healthcare looks like , big practices are snatching up a lot of mid-sized practices , hospital programs they're all consolidating and you're gonna end up with Amazon and then a bunch of small mom and pop shops like you are in the rest of the economy .

That's where this thing is going . And if you're an employer and you're trying to compete with a big box place that has incredible healthcare benefits because they probably own a fucking healthcare HMO Like you literally cannot compete with that . Now I will say there is this myth that cash practices you don't get any benefits , that you're paid less .

Actually , a lot of times you're paid more and some of the benefits are actually better than what you're getting . But a lot of times , when you're trying to compete with these big box employers , you're trying to compete in their sandbox and instead I would much rather compete on you know what ?

If you want to learn , if you want to do right by your patients , if it matters to you , if mentorship is important to you , then Public Sandy is a place for you to come and get that . We value it , we have a detailed program with it and if you don't give a shit about that thing , great , we don't give a shit about you .

They might package that up differently and being like oh , you can talk with all these doctors , you can go to rounds , you can do all this stuff , which is objectively also fine and good and for some people that's great and that's something . But how are we going to both compete and yet be a little bit different ?

And this , honestly , like putting a mentorship program into what you offer your staff , is part of how you can do that . That's how you compete in a different way , with your skill set at the forefront .

When we're talking about mentorship , it's like you and your mentor sitting down in a room working on some technique , talking through stuff , like and that's super valuable .

Can we get together and talk cases or something in that fashion that that involves everybody , so it's in a group setting . You could do different things with that . Even a skills lab or some form of it can be better when it's in a group . It could also be achieved one on one , so you can have that skills type mentorship in different forms .

Sometimes this is just guiding people to great resources , to great courses , to great podcasts , to great interviews , to information , to books , to things that you want people to be exposed to , but you don't necessarily have to be the person who is doing every ounce of that . You don't have to integrate that and be the one who's teaching it .

But the cool thing is is like there's a lot of stuff in there that's not even public health specific , but some ortho stuff . That's some SI joint things , some pain science stuff from Adrian Laugh , like some awesome stuff in there that isn't necessarily public health specific . But can we watch that all together ?

And then the mentorship portion is guiding conversation around . How does that apply to our public health patients ? That in and of itself is intellectually stimulating . It's interesting . It's something different than we're hearing . So it's not all public health related all the time . It jives with your ethos . If we're going to treat the whole body , it's all the things .

So can you do something like that ?

So some of our most recent quarterly meetings have been people you've brought in Nicole , an ortho PT with an IPA background , who was talking about thoracic spine and how to assess and treat that area .

So not only I mean a little added bonus too , it's a little bit of marketing as well , because you're reaching out to practitioners , you're having them come in , you meet your staff all the things like that is an added benefit . But the cool thing is is that that's really an amazing cool thing for your staff too .

You get a better relationship with some of the people you're bringing in if they're local , but you can also be providing these different perspectives to your staff .

And then there also is like an importance I think , nicole , we found at least of individual like one off communications . What do you do when you have that patient who is just a lot , who has a lot going on , or super complex , and how do you actually get help with that ? And so I want you guys to just be thinking is there a plan for that ?

So we use an app called Boxer where you can send voice memos but where somebody could have this really tough evaluation , pop out , say goodbye to the patient , make sure they were scheduled out and then go back into our break room at lunch and be like Nicole , what the hell just happened ?

So there is that that is a super valuable tool that you can provide is just your availability for that kind of stuff , and I really personally I really like having that be not in a text message or group text or something like that , so their phone isn't blowing up all the time . That it's something that can be outside of a personal type of communications .

That's why we , like Foxer there's some people also use Slack for that in office , like communication type strategies for that but I really liked the ability to text and voice memo , so that's great .

But you know , a kind of thing is like a little lunch and learn thing . You know we talk about brown box lunch sort of situations where you would go over a recent research article . If that's your deal , if you love that , then great , then provide that you can do an anatomy hour . You can do all kinds of cool little things .

So I hope this gets your little brain . This is not an exhaustive list by any means , but I hope it gets your brains as an employer going . For what can we do ? What can we add into a mentorship program that is going to be beneficial to everybody ?

We do a monthly clinical collective in skills lab where we block off a lunch and a patient hour and Nicole and some of our team members like present information and they go over techniques , skills , all the rest of that stuff that you guys want so badly to be able to learn and grow as clinicians .

unrealistic and not fair and if you really do value the personal professional development of your employees , you need to put your money where your mouth is and fricking pay them for their time for a mentorship program period , even if you do the math and you realize , holy shit . It's a shit ton of money .

It's a shit ton of money and they will never and honestly like employees . You will fucking never understand how much of an actual like dollar amount it is to provide something like this that is . I mean , it's expensive , it's fucking expensive .

We'll do it all in a single day . Back to back to back .

That's most of the day now Public sanity with the size of our team , but that gives them the chance to bring up questions that they have go over in tough cases , do their case load management stuff with you , nicole , and that's really a valuable time to be able to bring stuff to you , and you know they can do it in between stuff .

But that really sets aside time to make that happen .

Usually that's an outside speaker who comes in or a topic that Nicole really prepares , but that's a little bit more of a deep dive into an area of public health that our people may or may not be familiar with or may need a reminder on and really kind of moves the needle forward and like what we're focusing on .

So we had partially , we had the midwife come in and talk about first and second stage labor , but before I had created a little bit of a mini presentation on the three aspects of our birth prep program and let's dive into the research on tens during labor , let's dive into the research on perennial massage and Look at what we're actually teaching .

Are we , you know , so that people have a background of what does the research actually say ? How do we actually implement it ? What are the parameters for the tens unit ? Where do we put them , all that kind of a stuff ?

And then we had the midwife come in , so that was the mentorship Quarterly meeting just recently , like last week or whatever , so hope that gives you a picture of what it looks like .

Yet it does sound like a lot , it is . It is a lot , it should be a lot . I feel like all the things , and we hope that Anybody that works for us really values that as well . We hope to marry those two things . We value it . We would like to provide it .

We hope that we find people that want that in a job and also value it and are grateful for it as well , because it does go both ways . And , by the way , just as an aside , if Just he's looking at me like , what are you gonna say ?

job .

But I grew up that like you say thank you and please and like even if it's something that Should be done anyways , you're like appreciative of it . Maybe my mom was showing line gratitude before gratitude was a hashtag .

I do hope this has been .

It's the thing that develops the next generation of people in the field , and those of you guys who have been in this for a while I would hope have had a Mentor who has kind of poured it into you like . This is an opportunity .

It's something we feel obviously really passionate about , about being able to pour into our employees and not leave them Stranded as the only person at an ortho clinic with no one to learn from , or feeling overwhelmed or Feeling some kind of way about not being able to provide the kind of care that they want .

And that's one of the things that we're so Passionate about is wanting to give people the kind of opportunities and kind of mentorship that we believe should be provided if we want to see the kind of patient outcomes and the kind of job Satisfaction that we want for everybody who has entered the public rehab space .

I fucked this up royally with that and so there was just a huge miscommunication problem . So , at the very least , even if you only have one of these aspects on there , just make sure that you are communicating what you're providing , what you're not providing and what's expected of your people in terms of Participation and all that stuff .

That communication goes a long way With this stuff absolutely so .

So , as always , we want to keep this conversation going and let's continue to rise .