Breaking Free: My Journey Through Physical Therapy – Hilary

I’ve been a PT for over 10 years and have been in almost every environment from outpatient, inpatient rehab, home-health, working with wounded warriors teaching them how to run again and return back to duty. I’ve seen it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly with each setting. When I was in physical therapy school, I was so excited to start treating patients. I wanted to make people better and make a true change in the world. I first started off seeing more than 16 patients a day at one of my rotations as a student.

I really did not know what I was doing and none of my patients were getting better and I did not have any mentorship. We were just students being trained to tolerate high patient volume. I would spend 15 minutes with each patient until I had to move to the next patient. A technician would run the patients through the exercises. When that rotation was over, I never wanted to be a part of a clinic that saw that many patients a day. 

Throughout the years, I had the opportunity to work under amazing therapists, especially one therapist that worked at my first real job as a therapist. I was lucky that I found a mentor so early on in my career, he taught me how to actually get patients better. He gave me a good foundation to build upon.

Working in so many different settings my skill set just kept growing and I was getting more proficient in treating patients and really understanding movement patterns in the human body.

With certain issues arising at my last job, it made me realize that the health care system was not an actual system that cared about people’s health, but more of a system designed to keep people sick and depend more on the “system”. I was getting discouraged and having second thoughts on PT altogether. At the same time, I started having kids and wanted to be more a part of their lives. I wanted to be present during all their developmental milestones. I did not want to work full time and pay someone big bucks to raise my kids for me. 

I took a break in the PT world and took care of my kiddos. I dabbled a little in real estate, farming, homesteading, attempted to have online presence in physical therapy, and contracted myself out to teach a course for military leadership. This lasted for a few years. We felt like we were always “hustling” but never progressing forward. We were definitely in a rut and losing our direction in life. 

Just to make ends meet, Wayne and I contracted ourselves out to outpatient clinics that needed PRN work and was outsourced by a third party. I thought it was a pretty cool gig. A job would be posted online and we could take it or leave it. But this got us back in the system that we tried to avoid for years. We were seeing high load patients, observed overworked and burnt out therapists, and the patients were not getting better. This was a turning point, we realized we had become those amazing therapists that I mentioned earlier. Our confidence in ourselves grew, our frustration in the system increased and we were providing care that most patients had never experienced. The combination of everything made us take a leap of faith and start our own cash based practice. 

Therapy Nexus is more than just a physical therapy practice, it’s a revolutionary approach to healthcare and wellness. We’re building a community that gets to the root of the problem, breaking free from the constraints of the broken healthcare and insurance systems. Our goal is to empower therapists and patients alike with independence, freedom, and the tools they need to thrive. Therapy Nexus is where care meets empowerment, where health-conscious living is celebrated, and where therapists and patients alike can thrive in a community designed for their success. Together, we’re building a future that’s worth working for, a future that prioritizes family, health, and meaningful, transformative care.