@TheOncoPT (00:19)
Hey OncoPT and welcome back to this episode of the OncoPT podcast. This episode wraps up our series that we’ve been doing over the past few weeks on is oncology specialty certification worth it with answering the final question of if you should pursue specialization. Now this is only a question that you and you alone can decide for yourself.

but after this episode, you are going to be more certain in your decision and your ability to make that decision with confidence. Because the truth of the matter is, specialization is not for everybody. That is no shade, there is no shame in that. Specialization just either is for you or it isn’t for you. There’s no one is better than the other, one is worse than the other.

There’s a lot that goes into making these decisions. I have some colleagues who, know, when specialization was first starting to come out, and even now, they’re like, you know, I’ve only got a few more years that I’m gonna be practicing before I retire. And then I’m going to go and enjoy my retirement. I’m not coming back to oncology physical therapy. Friend, if that is you, I respect you and go off like amazing. ⁓

And so in that case, like that’s a very real situation in which specialization probably doesn’t make sense for that person. That’s okay. That’s okay. But whatever you decide, whatever decision you choose to go with, I want you to make that decision with your full chest, right? I want you to make that decision and say, I made the most appropriate decision for me. And this isn’t to say that you can’t go back in.

change your mind. If you’re like, know what, specialization is not for me right now. Maybe it is down the road. That’s cool. That’s totally fine. So what I’m going to go over are some criteria or maybe questions that you should be asking yourself of if specialization is truly worth it for me. If this is something that I should commit my time and my effort to, or if maybe I should do something else.

So first and foremost, let’s start with who specialization is not for. And I think we got to lead off with, if you’re making specialization, if you’re choosing to pursue specialization for the wrong reasons, it’s absolutely not for you. And I don’t mean this in a nefarious, evil-minded of like, those who would use specialization for evil should not pursue it. I mean, that’s true. I would hope that’s not a situation we encounter, but-

Who knows these days? What I mean by this is, again, going back to the very first episode that we did in this arc, so that would have been episode 395. If you are going into specialization purely for the money, my friend, you are going to be disappointed.

Maybe not now, maybe now, right? Maybe in the position that you’re in right now, specialization is not something that’s really gonna make you a lot of money. Maybe it does now, that’s cool. I love that for you. That’s not a guarantee though. And I would really, really encourage you if money is the only reason that you’re pursuing specialization, you are going to have a miserable time out of this process.

because this is a strenuous, time-consuming effort. This is not to dissuade you. If you are like, I want to do this for the right reasons, cool, friend. That’s not who I’m talking to right now. If you are doing specialization only for the money, when you start actually having to put the work in, put the effort in, you are going to be miserable in every part of this because this is going to feel like a lot of work and a lot of effort.

that frankly the money does not make sense for. Your heart has to be in this process through and through day in and day out. Yeah, there’s going to be days that suck. Yeah, there’s going to be days that rock. If you are not doing this because there is some degree of I want to learn, I want to enjoy this process, I want to grow from this, friend, find another thing to do. Like maybe pick up mountain climbing or something. I don’t know. Like

find something else challenging to do with your time that you would enjoy more because this is not for you. The second kind of camp of people that I would encourage to not pursue specialization would be those who are not regularly working with oncology patients. Now I know everybody’s caseload fluctuates from time to time. Okay, that’s fine. That’s not a problem. If you’re not seeing oncology patients regularly though, this is kind of a waste of your time.

If the oncology patient population is someone that you see on occasion, there are other ways to maybe better spend your time learning about that patient population than pursuing this specialty certification. There’s kind of an inherent, I think, bias. And I don’t think this is ABPTS, I’m not saying this is ABPTS doing this on purpose, I think it’s just set up this way and like what you have to do to prepare for this exam.

But if you’re not seeing patients regularly, you’re not really a good fit for this because like I said, I think there is a tendency in how this is structured and how you have to prepare for this. You kind of have to breathe, like live and breathe oncology for like a year plus during the specialization process. It’s not that you have to treat only oncology patients, but you have to be immersed in oncology. And if I think, hang on.

If you’re not able to then take that knowledge that you are putting into your brain that you’re spending time with, reading articles, going over textbooks, going through courses or whatnot that might be preparing you for this, and you’re not then able to implement that with patience, it is really hard to get that information to stick into your brain. This is not a test that you can pump and dump for.

And what I mean by that is, back to, I don’t know, when you were in school previously and you crammed a bunch of information for an exam and then promptly forgot about it shortly afterwards. This is not the exam for that because you have to be able to apply that knowledge. And this is a big thing a lot of people miss. This is not a just knowledge regurgitating.

you know, ⁓ this is the stat for this or this, these are the side effects of this treatment. You have to be able to take that knowledge and apply it to clinical scenarios. In your practice, that’s patience. On this exam, it is exam questions. And so if you’re not practicing regularly with patients, it’s really hard to make that connection stick between what you’re learning and what it actually looks like in practice. And then what are the next steps, excuse me, to move forward with. Now,

The last kind of area that I’ll say, this is not for you. Actually, there’s two. The short and quick one is frankly, so this is number three, if you are looking for something to do that’s quick and easy, this is not for you, plain and sweet. You’ve heard me talk about the time commitment. You’ve heard me talk about how much effort goes into this process. So we’ll move that off the table really quickly. But the last group of people whose specialization is absolutely not for,

is if you are comfortable with your practice. And this topic we talked quite a bit about in last week’s episode. And in no way am I trying to shame you into making a decision for specialization. Okay, that is not at all the intent.

But if you are comfortable where you’re practicing right now and you don’t desire to change that,

specialization is not a good use of your time. Because specialization forces you to really sit with how you’ve been practicing and almost in a way to

re-evaluate. It really makes you look, take a hard look at how you’ve been practicing and what’s working, what’s not working. And if you’re in a place where you’re comfortable and you’re not looking to make changes, that’s not an energy match for you. Because you do have to do that re-evaluation and changing how you do things with specialization and that is not, that’s not a fit right now.

And again, this is no shame whatsoever. If you have reached a point, you know, like a level in your career where you’re like, I am finally at a point where I’m not drowning at work because I just don’t know what the heck I’m doing. And you’re taking a moment to catch your breath. That’s okay. It is okay to pause and take a little rest, if you will. Now, I sincerely hope you don’t stay there for the rest of your career.

but it’s okay to have the insight into yourself to know that this is not where I need to be spending my time right now. I need to get to this level of being able to practice comfortably where I am before I can really undertake this very big, lengthy, ⁓ very energy demanding process. And again, no shame whatsoever. If that is you, it is okay to be very clear.

on who you are and where you’re at and knowing what is best for you in this moment. So if you fall into one of these camps that I’ve just talked about, friend, I say this with love, specialization is not for you. There’s lots of other things out there that I would recommend. Specialization is not it right now, maybe in the future, but right now that is not for you, my friend. Now, if you felt like this doesn’t really describe me, I don’t really fall into any of these camps,

Maybe specialization is for you, my friend. So if specialization is something you’re considering and you really wanna know, is this right for me? Number one, answer the question, are you working with oncology patients? And you’ve had moments where you second guess yourself and you don’t wanna do that anymore.

could be a good indicator that you’re ready to take the next step to becoming more knowledgeable and therefore more confident in how you practice oncology physical therapy. Number two, if you feel like you are learning, but it’s slow or inconsistent or still that random kind of patchwork that we’ve talked about over the past few episodes, and you want it to be

more streamlined, more intentional, and frankly more connected than this, we’re, we’re, we’re over here, over here, and then over there, and then pull some over here to try to make things fit together in this giant puzzle piece. If you’re ready to not have that random style of learning dominate how you are making it through your days, your weeks, your months of being a physical therapist in oncology,

specialization is probably a really good next step for you. And then if you would like to feel more confident in your complex cases, I’ve shared a few of my complex cases around this time when I was either deciding to pursue specialization or when I was going through the specialization process. If you feel like you can work with patients, and I’m not saying basic patients, Basic cases is maybe a better way to describe that.

If you’re working with basic cases and you feel good, you feel confident, but man, when that complicated patient walks through the door, ⁓ boy, all bets are off, right? my God. So before I started specializing, I had a patient who, ⁓ had advanced colorectal cancer, that’s what it was. And he had been dealing with this diagnosis for a few years. Unfortunately, he had seen disease progression multiple times and each time,

up to this point, he had undergone more more aggressive treatments. And this was chemotherapy, this is radiation, and this was surgery. And so he was the very first patient I had ever encountered that had undergone a pelvic exenteration. I genuinely had never heard that term or at least clocked that term before I saw it on this patient’s chart, like five minutes before he came through my door. And I was like,

my God, I don’t know what this is. And so I did a quick search on the internet and was blown away by, my God, this is such an invasive, extensive procedure, number one. Number two, I don’t know the first thing about a pelvic exentration and what to ask this person and what to examine this person for, how to treat them. Like it was completely unknown and this poor person was coming into my door and like,

three minutes at this point and I’m just freaking the heck out. I started the evaluation with him and kind of stumbled through some things. Thankfully, the evaluation was kind of slow going, unfortunately, because he was in so much pain. So kind of a good thing for me, not a good thing at all for the patient. And so this was also…

overwhelming to have a patient who is in so much pain that we couldn’t even move through some of the basic like transitional movements that I normally do in my evaluations. I mean, it completely threw a wrench into my whole flow, not to mention this gentleman was dealing with the after effects of a pelvic accentuation and literal a decade of cancer treatment at this point, multiple, multiple times with increasing intensity and side effects, et cetera. I mean, it’s just through a whole

I feel like bucket of wrenches into how I would have normally proceeded with my evaluations. Basic evals, I was your girl. This one, not, not, not at all prepared for this. And I did so much second guessing during the evaluation, after the evaluation, just not sure if I was really doing anything that was going to be helpful. Was I hurting the patient more than I was helping by having him try to move through these movements?

So much unknown in all of this. Thankfully afterwards I was able to call another physical therapist who had experience working with this type of patient to get a little more info on like, what the heck do I do the next time I see this person? Because I don’t know what I’m doing or where to even start with because he had so many side effects and impairments that he was dealing with. And this experience of being so woefully unprepared.

Yet I did everything I knew to do to prepare myself for this. Like, I don’t think, truthfully, I could have done anything more to prepare.

than what I did, it was kind of a like, I had to struggle through it a little bit. And this was one of those patient encounters I had that really said, I need to better figure out what the heck is happening here. Because yeah, with the basic evaluations, you might be fine. That’s great, that’s awesome. But man, the minute a person who has a little more stuff going on, a little bit more that they’re dealing with, and if your evaluations just fall apart or,

know, daily treatment sessions, et cetera. If you just fall apart the minute we start adding layers on top of things and you don’t want to have that burden of second guessing yourself and undermining your confidence, my friend, I think you should really look into specialization because that is what transforms you from second guessing and undermining your confidence to stepping fully into an evaluation with confidence. Even if you don’t know all the things,

you know how to think through what is in front of you. And then know when to say, okay, I’ve done all that I can do. I’m either now going to make a referral for this person to get treatment. I’m going to reach out to a colleague to get some more information. I’m gonna dive deeper into this specialty area of research, whatever that is. Specialization is not the answer to everything in like,

It gives you all the knowledge. gives you a really structured way of learning so that you have a framework to go into your patient encounters to know that you can reason through anything that you can encounter. Game changer. Like that one for me was so big. Like I said, especially that gentleman’s encounter with this gentleman was really transformational and that of like, my God, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing with these complex cases. So that aside,

The last kind of camp of people who are maybe considering specialization and are probably really, really good candidates for specialization are if you have been working for a period of time in oncology, physical therapy, you know you’re learning, you know you’re making progress, but you don’t want to spend the next five to 10 years doing that same level of, I’m putting in a lot of effort, I’m putting in a lot of time, and not seeing a lot.

of progress or this progress feels really slow. I don’t want to have to keep piecing things together on my own. This is a tremendous indicator that you’re ready for specialization. If you are tired of trying to, know, patchwork things together, you know, and just try to, what is it? Jerry rig, I don’t think that’s the right word.

but you’re just trying to piece things together on your own and you’re tired of that and you don’t want to spend, cannot imagine spending the next five to 10 years of your career trying to figure this out on your own. Specialization is the next step for you, my friend.

If you’re ready to show up to every patient encounter, not knowing everything, but knowing that you can confidently enter into this therapeutic alliance, identify what’s going on, implement a plan that is going to help that person, and execute it to see them make that change, to help them.

achieve their goals to get back to doing the things that they want to do and that they need to do with the people that they love. That’s the transformation that specialization brings.

And dang, that is so exciting. If you know that about yourself, like, let’s go, friend. Let’s go. So I actually want to share with you. So this is actually some words ⁓ from a previous oncology specialist bootcamp student of mine who I think really puts this together. So I’m pulling up my notes right now. Make sure that I read it how it’s supposed to be read. Here we go.

So Melissa C is a former oncology specialist bootcamp student of mine. So she went through the program as part of her specialization process and she talks about, know, okay, OSB, my signature program oncology specialist bootcamp, it’s great, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here’s what I wanna talk to you about. I have recently opened up my own practice and I have and will continue to use information from this course with my patients and to make my patient care even better.

This is the key behind all of this. Specializing helps make your patient care better, not just for the patients you see today, but day after day after day. And also having a solid foundation upon which you can continue to build for the rest of your career in oncology physical therapy. This is not just about passing a test. And I think this is what we really have to distinguish. Like if you are,

not a candidate for specialization, or if you are someone who is like, yes, specialization is for me, this is what it comes down to. For people who I would say, specializations is not right for you at this time, if you’re really stuck on that, I need to pass the test, I need to pass the test, that is not the mentality that you should be going into specialization with. If you are looking beyond the test,

This is where specialization is really impactful and where the value in specialization really lies. And I think Melissa’s quote does a really good job of, will continue to make my patient care even better. Because of that foundation that Melissa laid as she was preparing for specialization, she is now able, she opened her own dang practice, which is freaking amazing, and then is continuing to show up.

to improve her patient care so that she can continue to help patients year after year after year, hopefully decade after decade of a long illustrious career. That my friend is what I want for you.

I want you to be able to come out of the specialization process and know with full confidence that you know what the heck you’re talking about, that you know what the heck you’re doing, but you also know that you are elevating the expectation of excellence in cancer rehab in your area.

that you have taken what is possible, what is available for patients in your area, and you have taken it to the next level because of your specialty knowledge and your ability to deliver incredible oncology physical therapy. Done, period, whatever. And so this trade-off, this long-term versus short-term thinking is where you really need to, this is where it really kind of

differentiates potential or like future specialists into two camps. So the short-term thinking is like, I need to pass the exam because it’s gonna give me a clinical ladder. It’s maybe gonna increase my pay because it gives me additional letters, credentials after my name. Now we have this new cool abbreviation. We have onc.cs that we didn’t have previously, like all these cool things. That’s short-term thinking. And frankly, that is small thinking. And if you’re in that camp, I love you.

but you’re not ready for specialization.

But if you’re thinking big picture, long-term, like what Melissa is saying here, this is where you really need to be thinking in terms of, I ready to pursue specialization? It’s okay to want to pass a test. It’s okay to want more letters after your name. That’s cool. That’s great. It’s okay to want to advance yourself on the clinical ladder. It’s okay to want to pay raise. Those are not inherently bad things.

But if those are the primary motivators behind you pursuing specialization, your heart’s not in the right place, my friend. Big picture, long-term. The ripple effects of you being able to show up in practice like this, this is where your head needs to be at. This is where your heart needs to be at if you are truly going to be ready to pursue specialization.

That’s the big difference here. And that’s what I really want you to sit with and think about when you’re discerning if you are going to pursue specialization or not. And so in order to make that decision confidently, that’s what I really like. One, obviously listen to this episode, but really sit with that conversation between what am I hoping to get out of this process? Where am I really hoping to end up?

Am I hoping to end up with a passing score? Am I hoping to end up better able to treat my patients? This is where you need to be. This is the camp that you want to be in over here. It’s okay to want those other things, but that cannot be the primary driver behind why you pursue specialization in oncologic physical therapy.

If you’d like a little more help making this decision confidently, not just making it, but knowing in your soul that this is the right decision for you right here, right now, you need to watch my free webinar called How to Specialize in Oncology Physical Therapy Without Stress or Overwhelm. It’s gonna take you through that path of what specialization looks like, how it’s going to change your practice, and ultimately what you need to know before you get started with this.

Additionally, I go over next steps, right? What to do after you finish that webinar, including what might be helpful for you in oncology specialist bootcamp, which is my signature program where I take aspiring specialists across that finish line to becoming the best possible version of oncopetes that they can be for their patients in their communities.

If you’re listening to this, I strongly suspect that is you, my friend. I’ve included the link in today’s show notes as well as the podcast description. So the podcast player you’re listening to right now, that link is there in the description if you just open that episode up. I cannot wait to see you in that webinar. Like I said, if you’re discerning this, if this is something that you have been considering, go watch that webinar. It is really gonna help you make that decision confidently.

if you’re not certain just yet after listening to this podcast episode. I cannot wait to see you in that webinar. Again, it’s linked in the podcast player as well as your show notes. But until then, this is Elise with the Onco PT. And remember, you are exactly the physical therapist that your patients with cancer need. So let’s get to work.