TheOncoPT Podcast

Send us Fan Mail We’re wrapping up 2022 with some of our favorite episodes from the past year.   In today’s wrap-up episode, Dr. Kalie Heftka, PT of Dr. Reams Concierge PT joins me to talk about opening her own cash-based oncology & lymphedema practice. People don't talk about the early stages of opening a private practice or the challenges of building a business from scratch. We're...

Send us Fan Mail Gone are the days when PTs take a job & work there for 25 years.   There is a tremendous amount of opportunity for physical therapists, especially newer therapists, to build a career you love.  BUT, you have to be abundantly clear on what you want & what’s important to you. In today’s episode, we continue our conversation with Dr. Tori Crook, PT on common job red flags to...

Send us Fan Mail Starting your first physical therapy job is so exciting, especially after all the hard you put into your education. So what happens when the job you were so excited about turns out to be NOT AT ALL what you expected? Well, I brought my dear friend Dr. Tori Crook, PT to talk about her experience starting, loving, hating, & leaving her dream job in under 1 year. This vulnerable...

Send us Fan Mail Break out the champagne: we’re celebrating 4 years of TheOncoPT! We cannot believe that we are 4 years into this amazing journey with each & every one of you.  To commemorate this monumental milestone, I’m pouring myself a glass of bubbly & answering your questions on the podcast today. To join The Cancer Rehab Community (FOR FREE), visit https://TheOncoPT.com/community If...

Send us Fan Mail The ABPTS Oncology Specialist Certification Exam is just around the corner.  Time to buckle down on your preparation! But that resource list can be really confusing & overwhelming.  How do you start studying & focus on what’s actually important? By listening to this podcast episode! Today’s episode is a recorded Q&A session I did with oncology residents Dr. Athena Manz...

Send us Fan Mail Preparing for oncology specialty certification is one of the best ways to become an expert OncoPT. However, most physical therapists get derailed before they even register for their exam.  So they stop preparing. And this means patients don’t get your expert-level care.  So they don’t get better. We think this is just plain wrong.   Listen now for our 3 tips for more effective pre...

Send us Fan Mail Everyone is really excited about immunotherapy…but not so much about the side effects. If you want a structured way to get started on your ABPTS oncology case report, I'm hosting a LIVE writing sprint later this month where we'll work through this together . You can find the details here: https://TheOncoPT.com/sprint Follow TheOncoPT on Instagram. Follow TheOncoPT on Lin...

Send us Fan Mail CAR T-Cell Therapy has exploded onto the cancer treatment scene. But most PTs are unfamiliar with how CAR T-Cell Therapy affects our patients.  With more patients undergoing CAR T-Cell Therapy every year, we must be prepared for WHEN ( not if ) we treat one of these patients. Dr. Adam Matichak breaks down CAR T-Cell Therapy into easy-to-understand, easy-to-implement nuggets in tod...

Send us Fan Mail Immunotherapy has exploded onto the scene of cancer treatments.  In fact, we’re anticipating that most patients with cancer will be treated with immunotherapy at some point in our careers. But what is it exactly?  And how does it work? In this mini-episode, you’ll learn what is immunotherapy, how it works, & where to learn more about this rapidly growing area of oncology. List...

Send us Fan Mail It's been 10 years since the Prospective Surveillance Model (PSM) was first published.  This model saves our patients money, can prevent functional decline, & has changed our entire paradigm of how we treat people with cancer. So why is it still so rare to see it implemented? Buckle up, OncoPT, because there’s a lot to cover today.  But it’s soooooo needed. In this episod...

Send us Fan Mail Are physical therapists really the health care professional who should be having conversations about death & dying with our patients? Today’s guest & I resoundingly agree on this one.   Back for round 2 on death & dying, Corissa Decker, RN, BSN, is continuing her interview on tough conversations.   In today’s episode, Corissa gives us very tangible strategies to start...

Send us Fan Mail Can you truly prepare for your first patient dying?  Today’s guest says no. Death & dying is absolutely a part of OncoPT, but it doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. We may have a natural tendency to avoid these topics, but this actually hurts our patients.  So how do we start talking about death & dying? By having these conversations ourselves. When we talk about death...

Send us Fan Mail A 2022 JAMA report found that nearly 60% of patients with terminal cancer thought their cancer could be cured. This is not a reflection on our patients.  This is a direct reflection of our own failings as healthcare professionals. And it starts with our own discomfort in discussing death & dying. We owe it to our patients to have difficult conversations.   In this episode, I’m...

Send us Fan Mail We tend to treat what we see: range of motion, scar tissue, lymphedema, etc.   But there’s some side effects of cancer treatment that are invisible.  So they often go untreated. Cardiopulmonary toxicities are some of the most sinister long-term side effects of cancer treatment.  In fact, breast cancer survivors are more likely to die of heart disease than from their breast cancer....

Send us Fan Mail In PT school, I got to attend PT Day on the Hill.  It was so inspiring to be a part of so many therapists advocating for our profession. But this isn’t the only way to advocate for our profession & our patients.  In fact, starting small is even more POWERFUL than trying to get legislation passed.   In this episode, we’re covering 3 easy ways to advocate effectively for your pa...

Send us Fan Mail Podcast description: “Cancer is a disease of the old”...bullshit. Cancer is a disease that affects many people, young & old.  In fact, younger patients often have to undergo more aggressive & more extensive treatment for their disease, leaving them with significant impairments. Beyond the physical, cancer has a tremendously pervasive effect on AYA patients, impacting their...

Send us Fan Mail As newer OncoPTs, we sometimes put extra pressure on ourselves to be the perfect oncology physical therapist.   We may have this idea of how an expert oncology physical therapist looks, talks, & treats patients.  The reality is, not every patient needs this one version of an OncoPT.  In fact, your patient likely needs something else entirely. Are you implementing this strategy...

Send us Fan Mail If you told me 2 years ago I would be treating children with lymphedema, I would have laughed in your face.  I wanted nothing to do with pediatrics & definitely didn’t feel confident treating primary lymphedema. Well, joke’s on me, because OncoPTs have EXACTLY the skill set required to treat pediatric lymphedema.  And we MUST. But as you’ll learn from this interview: you’ve al...

Send us Fan Mail As an OncoPT, we sometimes think failure equates to catastrophic consequences for patients, like a pathological fracture or even death. The reality is, it’s usually not that serious.  As humans, we will fail.  Being an OncoPT doesn’t excuse us from that. Failing is actually an important part of being an OncoPT, because it’s what happens after the failure that really counts. Are yo...

Send us Fan Mail Patients can experience pelvic floor dysfunction as a result of breast cancer treatment.  However, it’s not just surgery & radiation to the pelvic floor that causes these issues. Dr. Alexandra Hill (@OncoPelvicPT) combines her love of oncology with pelvic floor PT to treat patients experiencing cancer-related pelvic floor dysfunction. Among our conversation topics today includ...

Send us Fan Mail It's October again, which means that it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month.   With the explosion of pink ribbons everywhere, we often neglect a small but significant portion of this patient population: those with metastatic breast cancer. Despite being THE breast cancer that kills patients, most people don't know that much about metastatic breast cancer. And worse yet,...

Send us Fan Mail It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer amount of treatment patients undergo for breast cancer, especially when we’re first starting as OncoPTs. There’s surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, hormonal therapy, immunotherapy, & a whole lot more on the horizon for many of these patients.   So how do we keep it all straight & cut through the chaos to understand potential impai...

Send us Fan Mail With so many chemotherapies, immunotherapies, & more out there, it’s hard to keep them all straight.  So here’s my secret: I DON’T. After working for a few years in OncoPT, I’ve picked up a few trends & just straight memorized some, but this is NOT necessary to start treating patients with cancer. The smarter thing to do is use your resources when you need them. Chemocare....

Send us Fan Mail While each cancer is treated differently, few diagnoses are treated AS DIFFERENTLY as multiple myeloma.   Multiple myeloma treatment may include observation, clinical trials, chemotherapy &/or other agents, as well as hematopoietic stem cell transplants (aka BMT).   And this can tremendously affect how we treat these patients as OncoPTs.   In today’s episode, I’m presenting tw...

Send us Fan Mail Bone marrow transplants (BMT) are a cornerstone of hematologic cancer treatment.  However, the thought of BMT often scares PTs out of our minds. Especially for us in outpatient cancer rehab, we may think that we won’t encounter these patients. But here’s the truth: we WILL see these patients.  My first experience was a complete surprise: my patient came to see me in outpatient phy...