All right! So hey guys, what's up?
It's Stephen Dunn, and today we have Dr. Claire Watkins...
Who is Dr. Claire Watkins?
Hi...She is our new physical therapist, making her our third physical therapist on the team with Dr. Danny and Dr. Andy. She's kind of taking my place, which is really weird because I now don't have a room because we did a little musical chairs with the rooms and Danny has taken Andy's old room. Andy's taking my old room, and now Claire is in Danny's room.
I know that's a mouthful, so with that said, I just want to do a quick video to really introduce Dr. Claire but also get a little bit of her story, and so some of the story will come up in a little bit and we'll joke and laugh about it, but you're all going to say, "Oh, I now see why you hired her," but I'm going to let that come up naturally. So with that said, the first question is: why did you become a physical therapist?
Dr. Claire's Story
When I was in high school, I became interested in physical therapy. I was pretty competitive in cheerleading and gymnastics, and when I was a senior in high school, I was trying out for LSU's cheerleading team, and...
That didn't take long, there it is...
Yeah, I ended up doing it for about a year, but in the process, I was overdoing it.
And then you went to college to prepare for PT school; did you start college with that goal in mind?...
No, from day one I wanted to be an architect, but because I didn't fully realize everything that would entail, I ended up changing my mind and thinking about how much physical therapy had helped me, and just like in my freshman year, I made that decision...
Now, she's already mentioned LSU and that she was a cheerleader, which I think is cool, but the fact that she went to LSU got Cheryl and me excited. Cheryl, who also attended LSU, and I'll tell you a quick story about her, was going to be on the cheerleading squad but then decided she just wanted to have a little more fun in school. Claire went the other route; she was on the cheerleading squad for a year and then decided she wanted to focus on her grades...
I'm not going to make a career out of cheerleading...
That makes sense. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Now you're originally from Lake Charles, correct?...
Yes...
And then you went to LSU for undergrad. Now tell us the journey that got you to Austin...
So basically, being from Louisiana, I got sick of the hurricanes and decided to pick a place that I would have been interested in. So when I was in college, we actually came to Austin and did lots of hiking for one of our spring breaks, and I just really enjoyed the whole experience. I looked into PT schools in the Austin area and was able to make it work. And then after PT school, I fell in love with it further and decided to stay...
That's great; I didn't realize you came here first and then tried to get into school here, as opposed to getting into school here. I knew you went to school here in Austin, but I thought you went to school and stayed instead...
I applied here on purpose...
Yeah, that's awesome, and it's very different coming from Louisiana to Austin; the hills, the scenery, it's just very, very different in a lot of ways...
There are no potholes in the roads; you can see through the water to the bottom of it, so you know it's not brown mud water. After moving to California and Texas, I'll never swim in Louisiana again. When I lived there in 1998, I used to swim there, but when I moved away, I was like, "Oh my gosh, I saw clear water, yeah, I'm never going to swim in those swamp waters again."
I grew up tubing in Lake Charles Lake, and there are probably gators down there...
Oh, there's no doubt about it, they're alligators...
I'm lucky to have all of my toes...
The importance of one-on-one treatment with patients.
The next question I have is, "What made you want to leave where you were working and come work with us?" We're not going to say any names or anything, but let the people know why you wanted to work with us...
Yeah, so I've always been interested in and have liked doing Pilates; that's what initially caught my eye, but the big thing out of everything, like my number one kind of non-negotiable after being in busier clinics, was the one-on-one treatment with patients. In my previous clinics, I was working normal hours but seeing two to three patients per hour with a minimum of two new evaluations per day, and it just felt like a mill. It was busy, busy, busy, and I just felt like I wasn't able to provide the care that each patient deserved because of the way it was set up.
Difference of work at previous clinics and current clinic.
So with that being done, I decided to make it a priority to seek out something that prioritized one-on-one treatment because I just felt like that was the best for everybody involved...
And that's a great point, and we've built our clinic on one-on-one care for the entire time we've been here, and some people don't realize the difference, right? Patients don't realize the difference, but all of the therapists who work here know the difference because we've all worked in the places she's describing.
Cheryl and Stephen's reason for building the clinic.
This is why Cheryl and I built this place the way we did, because it was based on what we didn't want to do. So now that you've been here a couple weeks, tell me what's been your favorite thing about spending more individual time with people...
Just getting to know everyone on a much deeper, more personal level It just makes me feel like I'm able to provide so much better care. I'm able to problem-solve and troubleshoot at the moment without having to take a step away to care for another patient. It's good, so I'm going to be with one person, and I just feel like I'm able to provide a more thorough treatment and a better experience for the both of us...
So it's a much more focused approach, and I always say when therapists come to work with us, you know your skills aren't going to just change overnight; you're not going to just become a better therapist because you have one-on-one time, but you are exactly right when focused on only one person, so it makes you an incredibly better therapist...
No distractions...
The distractions aren't exactly there, and getting to know someone on a deeper level means they don't always tell you the stuff we want to know, but you start figuring it out a little bit by playing detective with that one-on-one time and not being a detective in a sly way, right? I think just kind of problem-solving is the best way to do what you said a moment ago.
Now, one of the things that got me excited about Claire coming on board was that she does some things similar to us.
The school she went to is really heavy on manual therapy. The guy who started St. Augustine was a manual therapist, Stanley Paris. So she's gotten out of school using her hands a lot, whereas at the school I went to because of one of my teachers, I got a lot of training in manual therapy, but as soon as that guy left, that wasn't the case anymore.
It was kind of hit or miss. So I got a lot of manual therapy training in school, and she got a lot of manual therapy training in school, just like Andy, who went to the same school, but the campus was in Florida. Something that she does that I don't know anything about and that people ask me all the time about is dry needling.
Dr. Claire has done some dry needling training since she's been out of school, and I just want you to tell us a little bit about what dry needling is and how you use it in therapy...
I usually use it when I think it's a completely appropriate intervention for the person. I usually like to start with more traditional manual techniques, like joint mobilizations and soft tissue work, and if that doesn't seem to be helping, I usually try to use dry needling as an additional tool. So, basically, the idea behind dry needling is that you will stick a needle into a soft tissue such as a muscle belly, a tendon, or fascia to help relieve a trigger point, which is commonly recognized as a knot or a tight spot, usually in the muscle belly.
Dry needling is used to create a healing response at the physiological level, and this healing response is usually triggered by creating a micro-trauma with the needle. These are super-thin needles of varying lengths; they're usually one to three inches long, depending on what tissue you're treating and how deep it needs to go. The needle creates a micro-trauma and initiates a natural healing response that would normally occur if you had any other type of trauma, like a cut or something like that...
Should someone try dry needling if they are scared of needles?
Is the size of a dry needle the same as the size of a syringe a doctor would give you a shot with? ...
It varies in thickness depending on the application. It's not delivering any medicine, so it doesn't have the hollowness of a needle that you would get an injection with. It's usually a quick, in-and-out technique. It doesn't take very long, depending on how many areas you're treating and what else is going on. I'm not injecting anything into anybody. If you are afraid of needles, then it wouldn't be something that I would recommend...
I got it, I comprehended it, and it makes sense.
So with that said, we're super happy to bring Dr. Claire on to the team. It's our first female therapist in quite some time, so I'm excited about that. It brings a completely different energy, so Dr. Claire from Louisiana, who went to LSU and then went to PT school here in South Austin, has stayed around since working at a few places and seeing a different side of therapy and is now working with us in a place where our side just spends time with people.
That's the difference, and we're not better, we're just different, and by saying that, we really focus on you, the client, not on us and our skills or what we do, but on what you need, finding what that is, and delivering it for you. So with that said, thanks for watching and reading, guys. Thanks for being on board, and we look forward to having you around for a long time...
I'm excited to meet you guys!
To learn more about why Dr. Claire left the Orthopedic owned physical therapy clinic to work at a physical therapist owned clinic…