E721 | Should You Complete A Residency Or Fellowship?

In this episode, Dr. Danny delves into the topic of continuing education in the field of physical therapy, specifically in the context of running a successful cash-based practice. While residency and fellowship programs are not a requirement for success, they can be incredibly beneficial in honing clinical skills and developing a treatment approach.

Dr. Danny shares his personal journey of finding mentorship from experienced clinicians like Kelly Sturette, highlighting the importance of learning from those who have walked the path before.

The podcast touches on the pros and cons of residency and fellowship programs, with Dr. Danny cautioning against programs that may be too research-focused and lack practical clinical training. He recommends the Institute for Athlete Regeneration residency and fellowship as a solid option for those looking to further their education in the field.

However, he stresses that being a great clinician does not automatically equate to being a successful business owner, emphasizing the need for a multifaceted approach to education.

Ultimately, the key takeaway from this episode is the importance of continuously investing in one's own education, both clinically and in business management. Dr. Danny advocates for finding a mentor, pursuing relevant continuing education courses, and considering advanced programs only if there is a strong clinical passion and desire to be an elite-level practitioner. By prioritizing ongoing education and skill development, physical therapists can reduce burnout, better serve their patients, and grow their cash-based practices successfully.

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Podcast Transcript

Danny: My advice for you is, can you find a mentor? Can you go and work for somebody for a couple of years? Even if it's not where you want to be is it somebody that you can learn from and respectfully leave and go do your own thing? Not necessarily try to take all their clients from their business and go set up shop, half a mile down the road from them.

Hey, are you a physical therapist looking to leverage your skillset in a way that helps you create time and financial freedom for yourself and your family? If so, you're in the right spot. My name is Danny Matei and over the last 15 years, I've done pretty much everything you can in the profession. I've been a staff PT.

I've been an active duty military officer, physical therapist. I've started my own cash practice. I've sold that cash practice. And today my company, physical therapy business has helped over a thousand clinicians start growing scale, their own cash practices. So if this sounds like something you want to do, listen up, because I'm here to help you.

Hey, what's going on? Dr. Danny here with the PT on Fenora podcast. And today we are talking about. Continuing education and how much you actually need in order to be able to have success in a cash based practice. So one of the most common questions I get, especially for people thinking about starting a practice is do I need a residency?

Do I need a fellowship? Do I need these like more advanced training programs? Do I need to go through those before I start my cash practice? And I think that the answer is technically no, but it depends. So I never went through a fellowship program. I've gone through residency training. But it was a variation of it through the military that wasn't like a OCS resident Specific program where you can sit in an accelerated manner which I did anyway to sit for the OCS but I would say type of training was very helpful for me from a clinical reasoning standpoint Fellowship training.

I never went through fellowship training formally but I would say everybody that i've met that has gone through fellowship training. They're very competent clinically in a cash practice one of the biggest Factors that will determine your success is outcomes that you get for your clients like that.

It's if you open a restaurant, one of the bigger factors of whether your restaurant is going to work is if your food is really good, right? That helps a lot. You can have great marketing, but if you're and if your food is like mediocre It's going to be harder than if you have great marketing and your food is really good.

So For you, I think you have to ask yourself is competent. Do you feel clinically at this point? And if you're a newer grad, I would say a residency, a fellowship, they can make a lot of sense, but more than anything, I feel like mentorship from the right people is just as important. I went to a lot of clinical education courses and kind of piece together things that.

I was trying to learn, going from an FMS program to an SFMA program, to a PRI program or a DNS course, or go into Olympic weightlifting courses and run mechanics courses and all these things that I was interested in learning, but like nothing really. Consolidated it or brought it together for me until I met and started working with Kelly's Tourette and like just the solidifying of ideas and structures of how I was working with people in these systems that we would take people through helped me a ton in repeatability of getting great outcomes for people.

So if you're bouncing around to a bunch of different continuing education courses, My advice for you is, can you find a mentor? Can you go and work for somebody for a couple of years, even if it's not where you want to be is it somebody that you can learn from and respectfully? Leave and go do your own thing.

Not necessarily try to take all their clients from their business and go set up shop like half a mile down the road from them. I think that's a bad idea. I don't think that's a very I don't know if I should put it ethically. I would have a hard time doing that for someone that was a mentor of mine.

But you do what you want if you think that's the right thing to do. But I would say if you can get mentorship from somebody that really is like much better at what you're trying to become good at. That's the fastest track from what I've found, I would put residency programs behind that in terms of it's a more general generalized program.

And also it depends on which one you go through. Like we had a staff member that we actually sent through a residency program, and I'm not going to name which one it was because I'm not, I don't want to necessarily talk negatively about any continued education group, but I would never send somebody to through this residency program that would work in a.

And a program like that. I have right in one of my clinics. I just wouldn't do it. I didn't think they got a lot out of it. It was basically, extension of school, a lot of research, but not really a lot of clinical reasoning, tactical things that are really going to help them become a better clinician.

That was mainly all that we did. So it depends on the program that you go through. I will sell. We'll say I've seen really good. Outcomes with people that go through the Institute for Athlete Regeneration residency and fellowship. We have one of our friends Toko Wynn owns that company as well as one of our Mastermind members is a fellowship instructor for that program out of Charlotte, Andrew Kennes highly recommend that group.

I've seen a lot of people in our mastermind that have gone through that or sent clinicians through that We actually started down that path with clinicians before we sold our practice as well, and I think it's a great program So you have to understand which one you're getting somebody into but in a performance based world Like being able to understand more kind of the style that they teach I think works really well versus more of a general You know, Oh, maybe OCS prep residency program.

I don't think it's going to be really probably worth your time in a performance based practice. So I don't think it's necessary, but I do think that it obviously does help, and especially if you go to the route where you go through a fellowship program, this is a big time commitment. You really got to want to commit to it.

You got to find the right fellowship mentor. But anybody that we've had that's come through that we've helped them on the business side and their fellows they tend to do really clinically getting their schedule busy now where they tend to fall off. And this is where everybody runs into problems is scaling past themselves.

They tend to be really good educators and sharing what they've learned. So that can be great for building up other clinicians, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be a great. So a great manager of people running a systems sales, marketing, hiring, all the things that go into the business side of things.

It doesn't, that's not going to help you there really in any capacity, but it definitely will help you get better outcomes for people. So if you're on the fence about doing this, there's a time. Element that you have to keep in mind. There's a cost associated with this as well. And I think you have to ask yourself if you can find a mentor, somebody that you can really learn from is going to help you consolidate everything down and clearly understand what you should be doing with the niche that you want to work with.

That's my first choice. I would go and do that, try to do that, get as much solid on the job training as you can get, as much mentorship as you can get, sprinkle in some relevant continuing education courses on top of that. And then, when you feel like you're ready and if you want to do your own thing, go for it.

I think that's probably the most effective way to go about it. The second thing would be find a residency program that aligns with what you're trying to do. And. If you can't find that kind of mentorship that you want, then you can fight it that way through those programs and being able to come together in person to learn different things.

And if you really are a clinical nerd and you love this stuff and you just want to be the best clinician possible, then I think residency programs I'm sorry, fellowship programs really do serve a great purpose. All my friends that have gone through fellowships are amazing. They are so much better at.

Drilling down to exactly what needs to happen to get the results that they want. I think that's the key with those is this it's so much mentorship with other fellows so much case study work grand round style presentations Small nuances of really being effective as a clinician that it I do think it makes a big difference But if your goal is to become a really big business a really good business owner and scale a big business I don't necessarily think that is necessary to have that in fact You need to be clinically good and then you need to become a really good business owner to grow a big practice like that.

That probably would delay you if you're going through the fellowship side. Unless you feel like you really need to have both, I don't think you need to be that level of a clinician. It does help you get your schedule busy, but it's definitely not going to help you grow a clinic past yourself because you're not learning any business skills associated with that.

So that's my thought on that. I always look at investing yourself as a great investment, both clinically and on the business side. I think, pour yourself as much as you can pour into your people as much as you can help them learn as much as possible, continue to grow and progress. Like it's one of the great parts of the profession where we can stay so engaged.

It helps decrease burnout, learn something, share that with your peers. And I think it's an amazing way to go, but don't feel like you have to have a fellowship or a residency just to get started.

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