Navigating Through Challenges

By Angela Wilson Pennisi, PT, MS, OCS

The Dog Days of summer are upon us, a time of year for lazing on the beach or going on vacation for many. Not here at Impact! The contributors to your magazine have been hard at work crafting another great issue.

Each month, as I edit the magazine, I frequently write a note or two to remind myself to email an author or an editorial board member about a great article or create a reminder on something I want to implement in my practice.

However, this month, I found myself making a note on nearly every article! I cannot decide whether I should be learning to evaluate risk for Medicare Advantage companies, as suggested by PPS director Sean McEnroe, create a new spreadsheet for evaluating my social media results objectively, as suggested by editorial board member Ingrid Anderson, or developing a screening tool to assist physicians in evaluating who may best respond to regenerative medicine techniques, as described by editorial board member Bill Pfister. My to-do list is now twice as long, but hopefully that means my practice will be twice as successful!

In all seriousness, what continues to strike me about the membership of PPS is the diversity of ideas and skill sets it possesses, combined with a common value of sharing. Clearly, implementing every suggestion printed in Impact would pull you in too many directions to be effective, but hopefully every issue has something that strikes a chord on whatever obstacle you are dealing with that month.

I recently read an article about the challenges the retailers on Jewelers Row in Chicago face as their industry changes.¹ They are dealing with competition from big box retailers, customers are becoming accustomed to only shopping on price, and tastes have changed away from large quantities of high quality jewelry—most likely because younger custom- ers are laden with debt. Sound familiar?

The store owners talk about intergenerational relationships with their customers in years past—holding the babies of their customers in their arms years ago and then selling engagement rings to those same children. Many of us who have been in practice for years are used to similar relationships, treating our patients’ parents and children as the “family physical therapist.” Each month, the articles in Impact are here to assist you in navigat- ing and innovating through the challenges in our industry. If the articles in this issue of Impact are any indication, we will do just fine!

NOTE

1. How time, competition—and now a CTA redo—are dulling Jewelers Row luster.Crain’s Chicago Business. Brigid Sweeney, June 16, 2014.