Charles Dowdy: We’ve got a guest today with Tim and -- I am going to try to get this right -- Rebecca Baradell.
Rebecca Baradell: You got it.
Charles: Alright, how are you?
Rebecca: I am wonderful today. Thank you for having me.
Charles: We are glad to have you. I know all about Tim – the good, the bad and the ugly. Let’s hear the good about you.
Rebecca: OK. It is all good. I am a physical therapist at St. Tammany Health System. I have been there about nine years. I live here locally in Covington. I grew up in Slidell. Two kids.
Charles: Nice, what ages?
Rebecca: 10 and six.
Charles: And the husband, you let him hang around?
Rebecca: He hangs around, yeah.
Charles: What do you like to do in your free time?
Rebecca: I am an avid spinner.
Charles: Spinning of records? Plates?
Rebecca: I wish. I am not that cool. Peloton bike. I love it. I do it four or five days a week. It keeps me physically fit. My job is physically demanding, so it definitely helps with that aspect of my world.
Charles: Alright, I want to know how you ended up doing this. Not the biking the physical therapy. How did that come about?
Rebecca: Believe it or not, this is something I have wanted to do since I was a child. My dad had several total knee replacements, and going with him to therapy sparked my interest. I committed to it.
Charles: It is a tough field to get into if I remember correctly.
Rebecca: Very competitive, very competitive. You have got to really buckle down and hit the books.
Charles: And so, you did your training where?
Rebecca: My undergrad degree is at LSU. Then I studied my doctoral of physical therapy at NSU in South Florida.
Charles: Oh, OK. Wow, so, you’re a doctor.
Rebecca: I am a doctor of physical therapy.
Charles: Let’s talk real quick about generally what is your day look like. I mean who do you work with? What do you do?
Rebecca: I am stationed in the hospital, so I’m working with patients who are admitted into the hospital for various conditions. I work anywhere from ICU to orthopedic floor, to (Telemetry Medicine), so I can see a variety of things from day to day.
Charles: All right, so a little bit of everything.
Rebecca: A little bit of everything.
Charles: And I assume as they are using medicine and treatments to get patients well, the physical aspect of it is equally important.
Rebecca: Very important. Keeping functional independence is one of the top priorities of our hospital. That way, the patients can leave and go back to their home setting or their prior setting and they are not having to go to these post-acute settings like skilled nursing facilities and rehab units. We want to keep them active and independent, able to leave the hospital stronger than when they came in.
Charles: Typically, you see patients in the hospital. It is for the extent of their hospital stay typically and then do they stay with you after or do they go on to other things?
Rebecca: The goal is to keep them mobile while they are in the hospital and then after, absolutely if they need physical therapy after they leave, we can recommend Home Health Services or Outpatient Therapy services, to continue their wellness program after they leave the hospital.
Charles: And so, I would assume you work with all types of patients. One of the things we are going to talk about is kind of this elder care idea, right?
Rebecca: Right.
Charles: So, tell me about that. What does that mean?
Rebecca: Keeping the elderly population active, especially when they are being treated for other medical conditions, is super important. The World Health Organization recommends that people who are 65 years and older get at least 2 ½ hours a week of moderate-intensity activity. Those coming into the hospital are obviously not going to be able to get that while they are being treated, so we just try to get them up at least one to two times per day, keep them mobile, keep them moving, doing basic activities of functional living. That way, when it is time for them to go home, they are at their top shape and are able to go back to their prior setting.
Charles: We are not leading as active a lifestyle maybe as we did 20 years ago. Is that right?
Rebecca: I would agree with that.
Charles: Do you think you see more people because of that?
Rebecca: Absolutely, yes – and with COVID, I think it has probably thrown a wrench in everybody’s workout program. because the gyms, fitness centers, they were not accessible. So I encourage everybody – I am doing the more at-home workout programs. There are a lot of great resources on the internet for elderly patients, seniors. One of them I would recommend is Silver Sneakers for the seniors. If you go to their website, they have a great platform. They have online classes, on-demand classes. They have a little checker to see if your insurance company will cover that service for you or something similar to that.
Charles: Ok, I have done some online yoga and I find myself yelling at the lady that is doing it. Because my body doesn’t go that way. But there are other things. I mean just getting active, just moving.
Rebecca: Movement – it doesn’t have to be an intense marathon. If you break those recommendations down, it is about 30 minutes (a day) 5 days a week. Something light, like a brisk walk. You don’t have to be in the gym setting. You can do water bottles, soup cans, light resistance bands. You don’t need a full gym at home to be active and get those requirements in.
Charles: Let’s talk a little bit about the tools you have at your disposal. When somebody comes to see you, first of all: Tough love or no?
Rebecca: Yes, I feel like sometimes you have to give a little tough love.
Charles: That is kind of what I thought you were going to say, I just wanted you to say it.
Rebecca: In a nice way, though. With a smile.
Charles: The smiling sergeant. But what are the tools at your disposal? What are you using to help get people better?
Rebecca: At St. Tammany, we are very innovative. We are all dry-needle-certified, so if you are coming into the emergency room and you have an ailment that requires us to dry needle you, we can come to the emergency room and do it there for you. We are in the process of becoming MSK, or Muscular Skeletal Ultrasound, certified. All of our therapists are working on that. We sit for boards in November. That will bring a whole other avenue of diagnostics services to our therapy department. We have kinesio taping that we offer patients to help with pain. While they are in the hospital, we have a whole pain-management program. That way we can address pain in a productive manor rather than with medication.
Charles: What have I not asked that I should have asked? Have we covered everything that you want to talk about?
Rebecca: Absolutely.
Charles: And if somebody is thinking about becoming a physical therapist, any advice for them? Obviously, I guess “study hard” is a big one.
Rebecca: Study hard and know what avenue you want to go into, because there are a lot of different avenues. You can go into a hospital setting, outpatient, skilled nursing. So, just kind of know what is out there.