Show notes
In this episode, Dr. Sylvia Czuppon, Associate Professor of Physical Therapy and Orthopaedic Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine, talks about balancing her role as an academic with her role as a clinician. More about Sylvia Czuppon: Dr. Sylvia Czuppon received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 2000, Master of Science in Physical Therapy in 2002, and her clinical Doctorate in Physical Therapy in 2011, all from Washington University. She received her Certification as an Orthopaedic Clinical Specialist from the American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties in 2010. Her work has been published in British Journal of Sports Medicine, PM&R, Physical Therapy, and Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy. Dr. Czuppon is currently an Associate Professor of Physical Therapy and Orthopaedic Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. She divides time between outpatient clinical practice treating musculoskeletal pain patients and teaching orthopaedic content in the professional DPT curriculum at Washington University. She has given local, state, and national presentations on lower extremity injury rehabilitation and return to sport. She volunteers her time educating coaches, parents, athletes, and the community about youth injury prevention strategies. To learn more, follow Sylvia at: Twitter: @czuppons Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website: https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927 Read the Full Transcript Here: 00:03 Hey, Sylvia, welcome to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you on. 00:07 Thanks for having me, Karen. 00:08 Of course, of course. And, you know, we were talking before we went on the air about, you know, not seeing people in person and going to conferences. And the last time we saw each other was in Vancouver, at the third annual World Congress of sports, physical therapy. 00:30 Yes, right. That's right. Yeah, 00:32 I think that's correct. Yeah. 00:33 I can't believe it's been that long. 00:34 I know. I know. 2019. Right. Beginning of 2019. 00:39 I think it was. Yeah, it was COVID. Year, but it was before all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, 00:43 exactly. And, you know, shameless plug, the fourth annual World Congress on sports. PT is going to be outside of Copenhagen in August of 2022. Absolutely. So I encourage people to try and and your fingers crossed, it'll work. I keep saying 2022. It's gonna be the year. So shameless plug for that. Now, let's move into you. So today, we're going to be talking about life as a clinician and academia. And I love this topic, because I think there's a lot of clinicians out there who are wondering, well, how do I get into academia? How do I how do I do that? So why don't you give the listeners a little bit more about your background and how you did it? Sure. Yeah. So 01:38 I've been fortunate to be on faculty at Washington University in St. Louis for 15 years now. I think, approximately, it's been a while. And yeah, I sometimes I'm like pinching myself. I'm like, How is time flown that way? How 15 years? Yeah. 15 years? I graduated in 2002. So yeah, yeah, it is, oh, my gosh, I 02:05 can't believe it, I can't believe it. 02:07 So. So when I, when I joined the faculty, honestly, it was it was a nice, it was a nice mix of events. When I came out of PT school, I knew I wanted to do a little bit of teaching, but the Washington University at least, recommends that you have about a year of clinical practice under your belt before you join an academic institution. Like lab assisting. So that's how I got my start, I started lab assisting in classes that had orthopedic content. And when a position on the faculty opened up, I, I basically jumped at the opportunity got lucky enough to be hired. And away I went. So when I first started, my split, I think was 90% of my time was in clinical practice. And about 10% of my time was in, it was in teaching and it was all a lab assisting. And over the years, that is at has morphed considerably. I'm about 5050 right now. So I spent 20 hours a week in the clinic and 20 hours a week, teaching or doing teaching related things. And it's been a I don't think I'll ever go below that. But who knows what will happen. But I like that balance that I've struck right now, I can't ever see myself coming completely out of the clinic into teaching, like some of my colleagues have done, you know, you go to PT school to become a clinician, you don't go to become an educator, otherwise I go to, you know, to get my teaching degree. And I think that's probably been one of the biggest challenges is I am a PT, learning how to provide high quality education without an education degree. So there's been a bit of a learning curve associated with that as well. 03:42 And what do you feel are the advantages of being a clinician and, and working in academia? So what does your clinician hat bring to your students? 03:55 Yeah, you know, I think it's interesting. So, um, as a clinician, what is nice is I can give them I don't want to call it real world application, but it really is. So they students, we teach them in the ideal scenario, like, Okay, your your patient comes in, they have this positive test this positive test this positive test, what must be their diagnosis? Is any patient ever that cookie cutter clean No, 99% of the time, they're not right. So we teach our students in the best case scenario, the easiest ways to understand and so being a clinician, I can still give them a little bit of perspective, but like, here's where the gray areas come in. And this is why we teach you that ideal scenario so that you recognize the ideal, but here's how you can kind of think more with the clinical hat on it's a little bit similar to being like a clinical instructor. I think that's the greatest part about being a clinical instructor and shameless plug for those of you that are out there that are not clinical instructors. We need a lot more of them there. You know, our students are. It's such a rewarding experience. It really is. It's time consuming, don't get me wrong, but it is very, very rewarding, but I'm so be so being a clinician and being able to, to give the clinical the true clinical perspective on some of the things that students is learning, I think can be, can be invaluable. Like I have students all the time. They're like, Sylvia, this this sounds like a load of hooey like this doesn't even make sense, like help me understand when I would ever do this, and to be able to tell them look, you know, this is exactly why you need to know this level of detail, or this is why as a, even though, you are determined to go into sports, physical therapy, or you're determined to go into orthopedics. This is why you need to understand neuro for example, like, this is why they teach you neuro related things. I think I posted on Twitter, you know, like a couple of weeks ago, I've been to patients this year, that I think I'm, you know, not to toot my own horn or anything, but it's unfortunate, these people fell through the cracks, I think, in referring them out, both of them have gotten a diagnosis of ALS that nobody caught before this point. And it was based on what history they had given me, as well as some of the signs and symptoms that I saw with it within them. They referred to me like one had scoliosis, and horrible back pain, and another one that was a total knee replacement. And those are not diagnoses, you would expect to have ALS diagnoses associated with them. But some of the other things they were describing, it was terrifying. And just, again, like these are things to help students understand that they all do go together, you're treating a person that doesn't come in with a strict diagnosis, you're treating a whole person. And they don't always get that in the education setting when we're giving them fabricated cases. 06:27 Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And that's, that's amazing, by the way, from a clinical standpoint, that you were able to refer them to the right people to get the right diagnosis. Yeah. And that's, you know, and again, that's where physical therapists come in. And I'm sure that this is part of your teaching to your students that, you know, we can be that kind of primary care provider, you know, and even the second opinion, 06:56 sure, sure, yeah. And it is, it is one of those, you know, Missouri is not a direct access state. And so it's interesting, like teaching in a non direct access state, because we do typically get the patients they have the referral, it's generally pretty accurate, but you get some of these that fall through the cracks. And it's why we get the training that we get as physical therapists, you know, for those scenarios. But even again, in a non direct access state, these patients had been screened by other physicians, and it possibly just the complexities of their care, it just things got missed. So 07:33 amazing. Well, now, let's talk about what your responsibilities are, as a clinician, educator, so if you want to break it apart clinician educator, separately, or just let because I think it's important if people are interested in in, going in this direction, they need to know what it entails and what their responsibilities. Sure. 07:59 So I think it's a little bit different if you're so so my position is a faculty member means that I split my my time, assume a 40 hour work week, you know, nobody who actually works that when they're a faculty member on any any academic program, but, um, so I split my time for many people that come from a physician, whether lab assistant, in addition to holding a full time job, that's usually hours, in addition to whatever your hours are in a week. So when I was working as a lab assistant, before I joined faculty, I was working 40 hours a week plus lab assisting X number of hours a week, so there was a little bit of that, because very few employers will give you that time off and say, Oh, you want to live six, eight hours, we sure only work 32 hours here, like, it's very difficult to get that. And then depending on when the classes are during the day. So we have labs from like one to three, some people couldn't do that it's smack in the middle of prime, you know, treating hours. So that is definitely a consideration that people want to make. If you're working part time, it becomes a whole lot easier. Your schedules are a lot more flexible, as a faculty member, so I have 20 hours a week, again, dedicated to patient care, 20 hours for teaching. So in my patient care responsibilities, I basically have a set schedule that is has to be designed around the times that I'm supposed to be in class. So that has to probably be the worst for the person for my for my clinic boss who has to come up with the clinic schedule. He's working around everybody's class schedules and the times that we can actually physically be in the clinic. And so I treat in our clinic, we have a one on one model, so we don't overlap patients, you know, and so that's, that's really nice. We do have physical therapy assistants that we work with as well. And so I balance my caseload, I feel like any like I would anywhere else, I have autonomy to decide when I want to delegate when the patient needs, needs to come back to CV, frequency, duration, all of those kind of standard, standard types of things. Um, I am fortunate because I've been there long enough that I do get a little bit of flexibility and asking for the patient. Two types that I want to see. So I love the postoperative knees and any knee, really. So I do get a little bit more of those than maybe some others do seniority, it's great. And then my academic hat is complicated. So I'm depending on what semester in the year that we're in. And we're also going through a curriculum renewal right now, which is a whole nother whole nother topic of discussion. But in some semesters, I am a course master for for a class. And so that entails doing everything you would expect from a course to making sure the syllabus is up to date, to organizing exams, practicals, lab assistants, supplies, outside lectures, patient labs, etc. to an other the other semester I am, quote, unquote, just a course assistant, so facilitating the course master with all of those duties. So those hours are kind of wrapped up in our actual academic time. So if I have 20 hours a week, and I'm only in lab for 12 hours, my other eight hours are supposed to be spent doing all these other behind the scenes things which are, which easily kind of add up. So it is a little bit of a mix, and the curriculum renewal that I was talking about. So Wash U is going towards more of competency based education, which I think is the movement in education as a whole. And so we're we're in the beginning stages of that our first year classes going through the start of our new revised curriculum, and I am helping to craft the second year curriculum. So that's a huge task, taking what we currently have reorganizing it, restructuring it into an even better product than what we currently have. So there's a lot going on, that is certainly more than 20 hours a week. So yeah. 11:49 And can you explain competency based education versus what's currently happening? I don't know if that's like opening a huge can of worms. But let's go for 11:59 Yeah, yeah. It's also challenging my my full understanding of this, because it's all it's all this is like a complete foreign language. It's like going through, as I as I kind of alluded to earlier, I'm going through, I'm becoming like, I feel like I'm going through to get my education degree in the process of learning how to teach the this material better. So with the competencies, it's essentially like saying, Okay, you're competent in gosh, there's domains, there's, there's all sorts of terminology, but basically saying that, like, okay, that you have this one domain of patient and client care, within that you have different competencies, like, I'm able to take a, I'm making stuff up, because I don't know them off the top my head, but like, able to take a complete history for like, able to do communicate with respect and dignity for the patient and care provider, like things like that. So there's different things that this student is now having to pass and show competence in these competencies, a pass individual competencies, versus getting a grade in a class to say, you're good enough for that grade, it could be really strong in one area, but really not great and another, but their overall grade is enough to move them forward. We want to kind of raise the bar a little bit and say, You know what, that was good. But we can do better. And taking it to like each one of these competencies you need to pass in order to continue on curriculum. Got it? 13:15 Got it? Well, that makes actually makes a lot of sense. 13:19 Does now trying to make every lesson plan, every lecture that you give mapped to every competency that you have is a whole nother topic of discussion. Yeah, 13:32 good luck. Yes. Yeah. Good luck with that. And now something that you kind of alluded to before,…
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