TheOncoPT Podcast

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...

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...