I have been a physiotherapist for 20 years and what I love about it most is the connections that you develop with your patients. It is also truly rewarding when you can get someone out of pain and literally back on their feet.
In the early part of my career, I worked for many years in downtown Vancouver clinics. In some clinics, it is expected that each physio sees 4 or even 5 patients an hour. Even though it was my dream to be a physiotherapist, I was becoming disillusioned with this model. I wasn’t able to make meaningful connections with the clients and our treatments were rushed, incomplete and mediocre at best in my mind.
There was simply not enough time to provide quality care. It got to a point where I was uncertain if I was going to be able to even continue to work in physiotherapy. Morally, I just didn’t see how I could continue to do my work like this because I felt that at this pace I was compromising my patients’ return to health and function.
So I quit. I moved to Vernon, and (after a little bit of moping around), I realized that I needed a job! So I had two choices… either I needed to return to physiotherapy or get some different skills…
So, I decided that I would start my own clinic, in a way that I could feel that my work was rewarding and effective. I based my clinical model on a strong set of values and standards as to the quality of care that was provided. No compromising quality for quantity. Period.
Fourteen years later, I am proud to say we all stick by these values. It is also important to me that anyone joining our team gets this, and shares this same outlook. One of the things that I feel quite proud of with our physiotherapy clinic is that I know that everyone on our team shares these same fundamental values that I have based this clinic on since day one. I feel immensely proud of being a physiotherapist who provides great care and having a clinic that has so many excellent physiotherapists.
Our amazing team, from the physiotherapists to our admin team, is driven by excellence and top-notch quality care without compromise. And that, I believe, is the definition of success.
Judy Fullerton – Registered Physiotherapist – Owner Easthill Physiotherapy and Acupuncture
