Last Updated Sep 2012
We spend most of the days in our job as a physical therapist just talking. The question is whether we “walk the talk” or just open our mouths and let the hot air out, not thinking about how our advice applies to us as much as to improving our patient's health. We’re making recommendations, prescribing exercise, describing diseases and what to do about them.
There’s lots of talking, but how about showing?
Sometimes it helps to turn the microscope inward and look at why it’s good for us to exercise and eat right, too. After that, it’s time to put our advice into practice. Here are some of the benefits.
1. Credibility = Compliance = Results
Have you ever sold something to your patients? No? Well, you should. I don’t mean you need to sell 900 linear feet of red resistance band to everyone who comes in the door. What I mean is for you to sell the idea of health by looking like you yourself buys that idea. For example, sloppy, overweight PTs with donut crumbs on their shirts have a hard time trying to convince their patients the benefits of exercise and to eat right to decrease arthritic pain. 
The image of the messenger conflicts with the message. In the end, the dissonance between what we say and do will make the patients explode. Healthcare providers who do or show that they are trying hard to live healthy lives have much more credibility.
2. Live to work another day
A physical therapist's job is to be engaged in lots of “physical” work. This is true whether you work with bariatric patients, kids or high level athletes. There’s an unavoidable amount of stress and strain that your body just has to hold up against.
Just as an experiment, try tallying the number of times you push, pull, bend, lift, stoop, squat, knead, squeeze, lean, throw, catch and crawl throughout a typical day. There are also the incidentals like walking, sitting and standing as well as a host of static positions we maintain when treating patients.
The movements will differ depending on the setting, but I think you get the point: a physically demanding job like physical therapy requires a physically conditioned body.
3. Fight stress, feel good
You’re not stressed out? Well, that’s great. You should find a way to store up that extra dopamine in your body and sell it to the rest of us.
Stress management for therapists is a big deal these days, spawning everything from workshops and webinars to full-scale mountain retreats. But exercise and good nutrition remain the simplest, cheapest ways to blow steam without barking at your boss or punching walls. Did I mention they’re also more conducive to your therapy career?
The Take Home
Good health for patients really has to start with us. We bear the onus, the responsibility for sharing and demonstrating what it means to lead a healthy lifestyle, one that will minimize the chances of disease and maximize the chances that we can do the activities we like.
Most of our patients don’t have the knowledge to fix themselves. That’s why they come to us. When they do, let’s show them that when we do our job as physical therapists, we can walk AND talk.