TheOncoPT Podcast

Send us Fan Mail While multiple myeloma only makes up about 1% of all cancer diagnoses, its wide-reaching & vast impact on our patients' lives is significant. Many of these patients will be on & off cancer treatments over a long period, causing many side effects.  Many PTs are unsure of treating these patients, so we're diving headfirst into the medical treatment of multiple myel...

Send us Fan Mail When I started my first job as an OncoPT, I felt immensely prepared to treat all cancer diagnoses. Just kidding. I felt very confident treating patients with breast cancer, prostate cancer, & even colorectal cancer, but the diagnoses I was most unprepared for were hematological malignancies. And multiple myeloma practically made me pee my pants in fright. When in fact, these p...

Send us Fan Mail Health care professionals have struggled with the money side of practice for a VERY. LONG. TIME.  And it’s hurting our patients.  Just look at the American health insurance industry. Paul Wright, founder of Practiceology, helps health care professionals create practices they love, earn more, work less and enjoy their lives.   In our interview today, we don’t mince words.  Paul eve...

Send us Fan Mail It's our 200th episode!  To celebrate this monumental occasion, we are recapping some of our most popular episodes. Our guests have dropped some major knowledge over the past 199 episodes, so it was very challenging to pick out just a few of their snippets. In today's episode, we're pulling episodes out of the vault to revisit the best pieces of advice for OncoPTs. ...

Send us Fan Mail When I graduated PT school, I wanted nothing more than to be an employee for the rest of my life. 4 years later, I'm running my private oncology PT practice.   WTF. In this episode, we’re going behind the scenes on this whirlwind adventure of how I’m now helping those with cancer in my community.  It’s been challenging, but exceptionally rewarding. Even if you never want to o...

Send us Fan Mail Are you frustrated by a lack of patients or awareness about cancer rehab?   Then it might be time for an inservice!   An inservice is a powerful method of communicating with your community.  I actually have a 100% conversion rate from inservice attendee to patient.   Yea.  They’re that powerful. In today’s episode, I cover my 10-step checklist for creating & delivering a kille...

Send us Fan Mail Since breast cancer survivors often undergo many rounds of treatment (& multiple types of treatment), their list of side effects & impairments can be quite long. So how do we prioritize the impairments to tackle first when it seems like everything is the #1 problem? In this episode, you’ll learn the 3 questions you need to be asking during the eval to streamline your proce...

Send us Fan Mail Studying for the Oncology Specialty exam was really challenging for a number of reasons. But one of the biggest was trying to piece together information from a bunch of resources, including articles written BEFORE I WAS BORN. In research land, that's like a billion years ago. Unfortunately, the available textbooks aren't much better. Until now... Drs. Deb Doherty, Lori B...

Send us Fan Mail Cancer is quickly rising as one of the most common diagnoses people will experience.  Rehab professionals MUST be able to confidently & competently treat a patient with cancer.   However, most of us don’t learn this in school.  We may take some scattered continuing education courses, but still have to figure most of it out on our own. Our time is far too precious for that, &am...

Send us Fan Mail Breast cancer is pretty much THE diagnosis you’re guaranteed to see in OncoPT.   It’s one of the most common cancer diagnoses, plus the benefits of rehab in this population are well-researched. But just because it’s the most common, doesn’t mean we can gloss over the basics of breast cancer.  Every PT must understand the fundamentals of breast cancer, so that we can best help our...

Send us Fan Mail Like it or not, people with cancer are here to stay.  This means every rehab professional *MUST* be ready to treat them, because we will see them at some point in our career.   No matter the setting.   No matter the specialty.   No matter what. Unfortunately, many rehab pros don’t know the first thing to do when an oncology patient pops up on their schedule.  Enter the Cancer Basi...

Send us Fan Mail While sarcomas make up less than 1% of all cancer diagnoses, their impact is astronomically large. So even though these diagnoses are rare, you WILL encounter these patients at least once in your OncoPT career.   We'd better be prepared then. Lucky for us, Dr. Jen Bernstein is a board certified oncologic clinical specialist who specializes in pediatric oncology, especially os...

Send us Fan Mail Osteosarcoma is now commonly treated with chemotherapy & surgery, including rotationplasty. I have never seen a rotationplasty in real life...YET. I say yet, because I fully expect we will see one at some point in our careers. So we better prepare for that day. While there's a lot of details about a rotationplasty, today's episode covers 5 basic concepts that you abs...

Send us Fan Mail When we first start in oncology physical therapy, it can be easy to feel behind. Like we don't know enough, that we can't learn fast enough to truly help our patients.  In the quest to becoming an expert clinician, we sometimes miss out on the TRULY important lessons that make us the best PT possible.  In today's episode, Elise guides you through the lessons PT scho...

Send us Fan Mail Taking a chance on a new opportunity is often scary: what if we mess up?  What if it doesn't work out? But we should also ask ourselves: what if everything works out better than we imagined? Dr. Tori Crook is BACK on the podcast to recap how her latest big scary opportunity went: Camp Watchme 2022. She shares how nervous she was on the way to camp, what she learned that she&a...

Send us Fan Mail July is sarcoma & bone tumor awareness month.  While sarcomas only make up ~1% of total cancer diagnoses, osteosarcomas disproportionately affect young individuals more & can contribute to a significant amount of functional mobility issues. We as physical therapists must understand what osteosarcoma is, how it’s treated, & how it thus affects our patients so we’re prep...

Send us Fan Mail While osteosarcomas are relatively rare, their impact on a person's functional mobility can be substantial. Side effects from osteosarcoma treatment don't just dissipate once treatment finishes.  In fact, some side effects last for the rest of the patient's life. This is even more significant when we consider that many of these patients are young & still develop...

Send us Fan Mail Sometimes we encounter really uncomfortable conversation topics in oncology physical therapy: pee, poop, sex, stomas, death…  It may be tempting to avoid these, but that’s actually the worst thing we can do as OncoPTs. So what are we supposed to do instead?  Lean into them.  Have the conversations.  Open the door for openness & honesty with your patients. Because if you’re not...

Send us Fan Mail One of the biggest questions we encounter when pursuing our dream career is HOW?  How do I get patients to know about me & what I do?  How do I get practitioners to refer their patients to me?  How am I going to make this work?   While a lot of us get tripped up on the hows, this episode is a great example of someone who turned the hows into nows.   Rosy Bojorquez is a PT who...

Send us Fan Mail I’m excited to share with you a recording of a recent guest speaking opportunity I had with the Duke University DPT Oncology SIG (special interest group) meeting. These students were amazing and it was so cool to get to talk with future oncoPTs about what they want to do, what the field looks like, and then reflect on what's changed over the last couple of years. In this Q&am...

Send us Fan Mail It’s officially summer, which means it’s time again for one of my favorite things: Camp Watchme! Camp Watchme is the pediatric lymphedema summer camp here in the US, & I’m so excited to be going back this year. To celebrate my favorite summer camp ever, I'm interviewing Dr. Tori Crook on the podcast.  She’s a first time CLT volunteer at camp & she’s giving her perspec...

Send us Fan Mail Physical therapist, clinic owner, & philanthropist Gaby Miller joins Elise for a candid & vulnerable conversation about the ups & downs of cancer rehab, losing patients, clinic ownership, pivoting when a dream doesn't pan out exactly as planned, & the importance of taking care of yourself.  Because if we don't take care of ourself, we can't take care...

Send us Fan Mail "You're young & healthy." This was a quote that I heard time & time again with my young patients. If they're so young & healthy, then why do they have cancer? As frustrating as that may be for us to hear, imagine hearing that as a patient. For Shauna O'Brien of the Too Young For This Shit Podcast, this is her reality.  Shauna was diagnosed with...

Send us Fan Mail Compression bras are a mainstay of post-breast surgery care.  But there's a lot of nuances that every OncoPT should know about. For example, sports bras are NOT the same as compression bras - that's a rookie mistake I made again & again. Rocky Storm of PrairieWear is on the podcast today to discuss what makes a great compression bra, how patients benefit from their u...

Send us Fan Mail Cancer-related fatigue is one of the most common symptoms after a cancer diagnosis. Patients experience reduced ability to carry out daily activities and often experience loss of motivation. As soon as patients are diagnosed with cancer, we should be screening patients for side effects, including cancer-related fatigue. We must then continue monitoring for symptoms throughout trea...