This episode of the Hope4Med podcast features Teresa Moerer, physical therapist, author, consultant, speaker, and artist. After experiencing burnout and feeling that something was missing in her career as a physical therapist, PT Moerer knew she needed to embrace her creativity. She discusses her multidisciplinary group therapy efforts in skilled rehabilitation, strengthening the body, brain, and spirit to achieve superior mobility and a sense of personal accomplishment. Based on her experiences, PT Moerer developed her Experi-Age framework that teaches others to create exceptional experiences while achieving their highest level of function.

Connect with our guest:
Website: https://www.teresamoerer.com/

Transcript:
[00:00:00] Dr. JB: Ever wish for a safe place to have conversations that need to be had? A place where you could say the things that need to be said? Well, welcome to Hope4Med.

[00:00:16] Hi, everyone, welcome back to the Hope4Med podcast with me, your host, Dr. JB. Today, our featured guest is Teresa Moerer, who is a physical therapist, author, consultant, speaker, and artist. ” The Art of Assisting Aging Parents” is based on her career as a physical therapist and helping her parents. She now helps others improve their mental and physical space to achieve optimal health and function in their life and business. Welcome!

[00:00:47] PT Moerer: Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

[00:00:50] Dr. JB: It’s a pleasure to have you. Thank you again. So physical therapist Moerer, tell my listeners a little bit about yourself.

[00:00:58] PT Moerer: Okay, yes. I have been a physical therapist for 36 years and that all started when I decided to kind of pair my, what I felt like was my compassion for people and wanting to work with people and also my love of science. So in high school, it just kind of came to me. I think I was flipping through a book and I saw a picture of a woman who was a therapist and she was helping a child to walk. And I thought, you know, that’s what I want to do. I want to help people and this just seems like a great fit for me. So, that’s the direction I took off on, and I graduated from Rutgers University in Kansas City, and I took off on my career. And I can probably explain a little bit of this later, but always felt like there was a little something missing for me and my personality. But I continued on the path and I got married and had three children, and I worked and raised children. And I tried to continue on a personal development route because that’s just what I like to do for myself and others, so I did that. And then about three, I think it was about three years ago, I decided to put what I built, was like this framework around multidisciplinary group therapy, and that would be where we combined physical, occupational, and speech therapy, and we built these exceptional experiences for the patients and just saw them thrive. And that’s what helped my creative brain. I thought this is working. It was like took all my, all the things that I had in me that I love to use. I had to do my analyzing and I had to come up with these creative treatments and challenge the patients, and I really, really loved it.

[00:02:49] So, about about three years ago, I decided to put it into a book because as I was helping my own mother with her aging experience, people kept coming up to me, and to my sisters, and saying, “what do I do with my aging parents?” We had all these questions because my mother was in a facility, assisted living facility finally, that was kind of in the neighborhood, so we knew a lot of people there. So we kept getting these questions. So I put that into a book and that is when I decided to pivot my career. And it was a long time coming. I really knew that someday I needed to pivot into a more creative field.

[00:03:25] Dr. JB: It’s interesting that you say it was a long time coming. So when did you start feeling like you need to pivot?

[00:03:32] PT Moerer: Well, I hate to say, but even early on in my career, I just knew that it wasn’t like a perfect fit for me. And I think with my personality, I’m always trying to create things and always trying to change things and question, that just very early on, I found myself getting very kind of bored in my career and subsequently– I actually lived in four different states– but subsequently over all these years, I’ve had like 14 different jobs. So as you can see, I moved around a lot. I would say it was between six months and two years, I was almost tired of my job, so then I chose another , with new therapists, new surroundings, maybe moving from home health to acute care and to skilled care and to outpatient orthopedics. So I did learn a lot and that kept me going. Every time I got bored, I moved into a new place where I learned more, and also that probably helped me get where I am today by picking up all these different tools and strategies. But yeah, it was very early on in my career that this started happening.

[00:04:45] Dr. JB: And when you say you got bored, were you feeling burnt out or you just were like, oh, this work is too easy, I need more challenges?

[00:04:52] PT Moerer: Well, I really feel like I felt burned out. Yeah. And I guess I didn’t really know what to do but just to keep going, because my career was also, like my career and my job was also helping support the family. And we were raising three children and we kind of needed the two incomes, so I didn’t feel like I really had an option at that time. And That’s probably why I kept moving on, but I don’t know, I enjoyed the healing, the healing profession, but yet a lot of it left me, I would say like kind of high and dry. I just, I didn’t feel satisfied. I didn’t feel like I was using like my talents and doing the personal development for myself, so yeah, I did feel very burned out.

[00:05:42] Dr. JB: And you’ve mentioned a couple of times that you felt like something was missing. Did you find what that missing piece was in the end?

[00:05:49] PT Moerer: Yeah, I think I did. I think I did. And all along the way, I kind of blamed myself in a way because, I’m really not a person, I’m not going to blame somebody else for my choices, but I kept thinking, okay, Teresa, you don’t have the personality for this. You’re an introvert and you’re an analyzer, and as productivity got more important along the way in our profession, because anybody who started 36 years ago, we knew back then productivity wasn’t our first thing we thought about in our job, but now it is becoming very, very important in our job, to be very productive. So that was one thing. And I was going to mention too that my creative spirit, like I would actually get patients together to work together and do things together, I was always naturally drawn to that group because I saw the benefits and the power of these group therapy treatments. And I think just sometimes, I didn’t feel like I fit in and I think I always felt like I did things a little different, but yet I felt that I was being effective with my patients, so I just kept on going in that route in that mode, and eventually I wrote this book for caregivers and the aging, with a proactive aging process and actually, the group therapy treatments that we use are now, they have the scientific research. They’re based on scientific research to show why face-to-face interaction is so critical for our health. So, I felt like I was standing alone so many times but I am a person who, I believe in myself and I really persevere, but it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t easy getting through that. But again, I just kept going on and on and working in and doing the best I could and giving where I could in the profession.

[00:07:45] Dr. JB: Yeah. So standing alone and feeling like you don’t fit in is so challenging.

[00:07:51] PT Moerer: Yes, it really is. It really is. And when you have this idea and you think this is working and it’s almost like, why doesn’t anybody else see this? And I actually, to this day still have those same feelings because a lot of people still don’t see how beneficial this treatment is. So now I went into, I went into art for myself because I teach people how to use their brains, how to keep your brain flexible and creative and how to age well, so I thought, I kinda told myself, Teresa, if you’re going to teach this, then you need to create something. And I really have created a few things along the way, but I thought, I need to be more creative, so I went back to painting. And now I call myself an artist. I feel like I am an artist and I feel like I’m really relating to that, being an artist and I think that’s what I tried to do all along with my profession, was I tried to make an art out of it. Whether I succeeded or didn’t succeed or whatever, I kind of had to do that for myself. I had to make it into an art. And now that I am an artist, so to speak, I have all these oil paintings and acrylic paintings that I’m wanting to sell and getting them online now, I feel so much more fulfilled in my life and my work and my career. It’s hard to explain, but that I think was kind of the missing piece for me, was that creative piece. And I think what we need to do is just realize that we are all, even as a profession, we all bring something different to the table and we need to kind of uphold people and show and highlight their gifts and their strengths and make them a part of the team because I believe in diversity, I believe in diverse teams to move you forward in your career and your profession.

[00:09:45] Dr. JB: So, you said that you went back to painting, was that something that you had engaged in prior to becoming a physical therapist?

[00:09:54] PT Moerer: Well, I had actually never took a painting class until I was almost, I think, oh, gosh, like 56 years old. I think I took my first painting class and actually I’m 60 now, but I took a lot of art in high school, and I thoroughly enjoyed it and I thoroughly enjoyed art history. And actually when my, one of my art teachers in high school asked me what I was going to do after high school, I said, oh, I’m going to become a physical therapist. And she said, well, why don’t you look into becoming an art therapist? I just, kind of knowing myself, I felt like I really need to engage with the sciences. I just, I knew it wasn’t my time to be an artist and I kind of compared myself too to people in the class and I thought, you know, I enjoy it and I like art, but I’m not that good to make this into a profession. So yeah, I kind of walked away from that, but all these years, I used my creativity. And actually, two of our children chose very creative fields and the other one is also creative. We had a very creative home environment and there’s just a lot of interplay between, talking and discussions, and we had some acting in the family, we had some design in the family, and it was just very interesting. And I just kind of kept my creative juices flowing, if you will. I just try to nurture that in myself. And finally, it’s something that I’m using now and are really enjoying and I’m pairing my art with my coaching for people.

[00:11:33] Dr. JB: So, could we talk a little bit more about this framework that you developed and how you are incorporating your return to the creative side with this framework?

[00:11:45] PT Moerer: Yes. Yes. The framework I developed, I call it ExperiAge, because I believe in experiences at all ages to grow our bodies, brains, and spirits. Just throwing in as a side note, one statistic I read recently was that 90% of dementia can be prevented. So, I teach the proactive aging process and that’s what ExperiAge is, it is bringing some very exceptional experiences into your life at all ages.

[00:12:18] So, my book is for caregivers and the aging, and I have a four-step method where I first help people discover their strengths. And I have a couple of educational theories I use and that helps to also shed light on weaknesses, which the method I teach teaches us that we can build up our weaknesses to a level where they’re not such a deficit for us and we need all of our intelligences as we travel through our life and into our aging years. So that’s kind of the first step. And then I help people connect with their life vision, because honestly, that’s just really what keeps us moving forward. And if I didn’t have that life vision of being a creative all those years, and I think if I had thought this is it, this is all I’m ever going to have, this is it, I might’ve actually left the profession earlier. So I teach people to connect to that life vision, keep it alive, maybe tweak it a little bit and really get up every morning with passion, passion for life. And then I teach people how to set goals so that they can achieve their desires and their outcomes they want in life. And within that, I help people pick up these concrete activities, as what I call them, to propel you to meet your goals. And finally, the assessment and the reassessment of where you’re going and knowing if you’re on the right path or if you need to make some changes. And again, just with my own life, if I had maybe some opportunities a little bit earlier, possibly I would have taken them, but also looking back at my life, I can’t imagine, I can’t really imagine myself without having this physical therapy career in the healing arts to engage in that. And there was just so many good things about it also.

[00:14:09] So, yeah, that’s my four step method. And it’s kind of, it’s one that really doesn’t stop once you achieve your goals, it’s kind of like a revolving method where you just start over and you’re reassessing where you are and making changes. I feel like life should be dynamic and it should be ever changing, life giving, so that you can go onto it, continue to achieve your highest level of function.

[00:14:39] Dr. JB: And your work when you were a physical therapist, was it focused on elderly patients?

[00:14:45] PT Moerer: Much of it was, yes. And I really enjoyed the geriatrics, I really did enjoy working with the elderly. I mean, I probably didn’t fit into well with say like the college athletes and I’ve just, I don’t know. I just have more, I think the compassion and the elderly, that worked well together. Yeah, I really, and you know, sometimes they have the stories to tell of their life that can be heartwarming and funny. And I did enjoy, enjoy interacting with them.

[00:15:17] Dr. JB: And so this program that you created, this framework, also focuses on the geriatric population?

[00:15:23] PT Moerer: Yes. Yes, it does. And my book, it’s like, some people ask me, is it for caregivers or is it for the elderly? And it, it’s kind of weird to say, but it’s kind of for both. I think as a caregiver, you have to take care of yourself first, so that actually you can be a caregiver. So my method also works, really works for anybody. And I tell caregivers to do this for yourself and then teach your aging parents to embrace these healthy lifestyle strategies so that you can all age well and have some great times together, build up these treasured memories that you want to have because eventually when your parents pass away, those treasured memories are really invaluable to you, so…

[00:16:10] Dr. JB: That’s very true. That’s extremely accurate. So what was the impetus for you developing this framework and deciding to make this transition? Was there a straw that broke the camel’s back? Or can you walk me through what happened?

[00:16:28] PT Moerer: Yes. Yes. And it was about, I think it was about 15 years ago when I experienced this group therapy treatment that we use and I was just amazed at the results and I was so amazed and I liked it so much that I decided to just put it into this four-step process because I was in a nursing home in skilled care where we would have patients there, I would say probably the shortest amount of time was two weeks and we kept patients up to six weeks for their rehabilitation. And I just thought that this was a great way to help these patients actually kind of go inside or kind of have this introspection into their own lives while they were there, so they could really make a lasting impact on their outcomes and on the goals that they have for the rest of their lives. So, I kind of I made this into something that was much, much bigger than it really could be. But I kind of did that for myself too, because I was like this is working and it’s fun, and the patients are gaining so much with what we’re doing.

[00:17:38] And just as an example, one of the groups, I called– my love of painting, of course– Picasso’s Painting Party and I dug up all this history about Picasso and during this group therapy session, we not only talked about the artist he was, but how he had transitions in his life. And he had like the melancholy period and the cubism period where he actually developed something new. And so we talk about his life and we talk to people that are going through transitions, because if you fall and break your hip and you can’t go home, that is a transition that you have to make. And just knowing that people went before you making transitions and they were successful, and so, we made it into more than just the physical activity. But then we got our patients up and we had them paint a picture and it was kind of where somebody would start the picture and then people would add to it. And we worked on balance and we worked on safety and we worked on skills for going home. So we did all of that, and so it was a very comprehensive group. So that’s why I’m saying that the patients actually they gained a lot of knowledge and skills and practice in balance and strength during these groups.

[00:18:57] So, I guess that’s why I’m saying that triggered me and my creative self, that I wanted to put a framework around this. And I wanted to make it into something bigger than maybe it was and years later, I decided that I wanted to share that with people in the community and in the world because we’re always going to have the aging, right now , the baby boomers, there’s a lot of aging people that need a lot of help. And also we have the science, the research now, the scientific-based research to tell us why we’re doing this. Why we’re living with these healthy lifestyle strategies, how we’re protecting our brain and our body and our spirit so that we can age well into our seventies and eighties and nineties. So that’s kinda what prompted me to do this, and I don’t know, I think that I was kind of waiting for a period in my life where I could make that change. And it was just like that, the jobs, it was just kind of one disappointment after another. And I’m not saying anything bad about the places I worked, I worked some excellent, excellent rehabilitation facilities, but it was all internal. It was within me, and I just knew I wasn’t satisfied. So, it was kind of that constant let down. And finally, when we became empty-nesters, the kids were almost out of college and I had the freedom to make that change, and that’s when I took that opportunity.

[00:20:31] Dr. JB: And when you say that it was just one disappointment after another, was there anyone that you were able to talk to about how you were feeling?

[00:20:41] PT Moerer: Well, I think sometimes when I might bring something up to a supervisor, I didn’t always feel understood. And again, I just pointed it back towards myself, like, well, Teresa, you’re not quite the perfect fit for this job. So I always kind of put it back on myself, which I can’t say was maybe the best thing to do, but I also gravitated towards the therapist that I really clicked with, so to speak. We had like a lot of the same ideas and the same outlook and the same vision, and I gravitated towards those people and those people became my better friends in the physical therapy departments and occupational therapy and speech, and, I guess that’s how I coped, was I made those friendships where I knew that somebody thought like me. I knew that somebody saw what I saw and kind of worked like I worked, and value, had the same type of values that I did. So I think that’s how I got through all those years. And I must admit, I probably take things a little too serious sometimes, and again, that’s part of my personality, I think I put a lot of pressure on myself to have a career that was extremely fulfilling to me. And again, I think that’s just part of my personality.

[00:22:03] Dr. JB: But you weren’t fulfilled.

[00:22:05] PT Moerer: Right. Right. No, I just, I’m so happy now that I am making a change. And like I said, it was a long time coming, but no, I was not completely fulfilled

[00:22:18] Dr. JB: And even with these friends that you made at work, were you able to share with them that there’s just something missing, were you able to have those conversations with them?

[00:22:27] PT Moerer: I would say maybe a little bit at times, but I think the conversations were pretty brief and I don’t think they were really, they weren’t real deep conversations, or I don’t think they really amounted to anything, as far as solutions to a problem. So, and my poor husband, he had to hear a lot of the work stuff and he doesn’t talk about work at all, it was kind of funny, but I mean, I don’t want to shed a super negative light on it. I know that therapy therapy is a good fit for many people. I do think we’re under a lot of pressure right now and I see some of the new therapists coming out into the field right now being extremely overwhelmed. And I understand that because I’ve been there, I’ve done it. I understand the, what you have to do to survive as a therapist. There’s a lot of productivity standards and if you’re just getting into it, a lot of times you have to cut your conversation short with patients because you’ve got to move on. And where you think you might be able to make a difference, there’s not, you don’t have the time anymore. But I think people are trying to remedy this in our profession. It’s not that we’re totally ignoring it. It’s just that there’s a lot of standards out there right now that we have to meet as a health profession,

[00:23:49] Dr. JB: And can you extrapolate on that a little bit more, in terms of the changes that you have seen in the field of physical therapy?

[00:23:57] PT Moerer: Yes, we’re under a lot of pressure right now with the productivity. We have to, a lot of our documentation is done while we’re working with a patient. So, sometimes you have to write your note as you’re working with them. So you have to divide your attention, where I think in the past, we didn’t have to. That wasn’t an issue. We didn’t document until maybe say like over lunch or at the end of the day, we did our documentation. And now it’s when we’re seeing the patients. So, that can be a little stressful. And sometimes your work is based on units that you’ve gotten done during the day, or the time you spent with a patient, and that’s always in the back of your mind. Am I being protective? Am I getting enough units to bill for today? So there’s a lot of that and it’s just, it’s stressful. I know some of the new grads that are coming out that, and I know as a new grad, you’re still learning a lot, and then when you have to go into under these productivity standards, it can make it really tough. And I think that just leads to burnout with a lot of therapists.

[00:24:59] Dr. JB: Because you’re constantly under a tremendous amount of stress to get through this encounter, finish your documentation, and go to your next patient.

[00:25:08] PT Moerer: Yes. Yes. And there’s also got to be the time for assessment, and as therapists, and you as a doctor, we’re always assessing patients and evaluating, that’s just part of our job, and that’s how we decide our next treatment, is through our assessment. You have that time when you’re evaluating a patient and you get paid for the evaluation, but really every treatment is an ongoing evaluation of the patient so you know where to go next. So, it’s trying to find a good, happy medium of how much you have to treat, how much you have to assess. And again, my thought is, am I giving the patients enough? Am I doing enough today to make a difference in their life? And that takes the time for the assessments and the evaluations. And really when I put my eyes on a patient, I’m assessing them. So I’m like, well, can I charge for this? Can I charge for this assessment? Things like that run through my mind. And we should be paid for that, that’s what our specialty is. Is assessing and evaluating and treating a patient. So there’s just times like that, that you might find yourself doing the same things with patients that you do over and over again that you may actually need to be changing things up, but yet at the same time, there’s so much pressure on getting things done. And I’ve been in four or five buildings in one day seeing multiple patients and I live kind of in a rural community, and so, I mean, that just leads again to the burnout. You know? You’re seeing patients for a few minutes as a physical therapist and the assistant may see them for the rest of the time, and actually, I think, a lot of the companies I worked for, if I would say, I would like to see this patient for an hour today, then they would let me. It wasn’t a problem, but the minimal requirements of a therapist seeing a patient are fairly minimal during the week. So again, it weighs, on my mind as I want to be ethical, I want to be treating at the highest level I can treat, and am I doing that? And then that comes back on me, thinking, am I living up to the standards that I hold for myself as a professional?

[00:27:18] Dr. JB: With the time that you have in front of patient and productivity, so you said some companies allow you to be with the patient for an hour, are you able to be with patients for longer than an hour? ‘Cause I know with the geriatric population, I can see how just the process of just getting them from sitting to standing could take a prolonged period of time.

[00:27:37] PT Moerer: Yes. Well, there usually are– I mean you could, I suppose if you wanted to see them longer than an hour, but there are certain standards and they change all the time, but of the how many units that an insurance company will pay you for per day, we have to work within those limits too at times. And sometimes we try to get creative and it may be even working with other professionals and saying, well, I’m going to do this today, and then, say like, I am going to work on balance and strength and they might be working on say like activity tolerance or doing a home assessment. So we try to be creative, work together, and do that type of treatment, but yeah, again our standards in the, some of the realms of therapy are changing a little and we’re not able to see the patients maybe as long as we used to, or like for as many weeks or days. Again, that is another stressor, because when you say, okay, you’ve got seven days to get this patient home and we used to have three weeks, you know? So that puts a little more stress on you, and I kind of take that to heart. I think, being an empathetic, most healthcare providers are empathetic, you don’t want to send somebody home before they’re ready. We take that on as healthcare professionals, I think we take it personally in a way. I know it bothers me. I always tell my patients or I tell others, I say, my standard is getting somebody to their hundred percent and I just, I believe in that, I want people to function at a high level so they can continue to age well. And I know if you go home and you can’t walk, if you can’t get up and exercise, there sets in some of the chronic diseases. And I’m looking at this from a holistic approach and wanting more for my patients. And that’s something that personally, sometimes I can’t let go of, just as an empathetic healthcare worker. So again, that’s another stress and I think we’re all dealing with that right now.

[00:29:37] Dr. JB: Yeah. And I wonder where they get this number from.

[00:29:41] PT Moerer: Yeah, I do too. I have been in and out a little bit of different healthcare settings lately. So, actually when I went to Kansas City to help my mother, I went there for like about two and a half years to help her along with my other sisters, and I worked in a couple of acute care hospitals. So that was, that acute care is a little different. And then, coming back to the skilled care and like the nursing homes, the rules had changed. I was like, wow. And so the people I’m working with, they’re telling me, okay, yeah, this is how the rules changed and this is how long we get to see patients. And it really shocked me. And, so yeah, driven by the metrics from the insurance companies, Medicare and who’s ever paying for this, the metrics are changing. And I always knew, I always felt like, someday we’ll be paid for our outcomes, our outcomes with patients, and that is coming to be. And I’m not that involved with it right now, I couldn’t tell you all the details of it, but I just know things are changing and it is putting a little bit more pressure on healthcare providers.

[00:30:49] Dr. JB: Mm. That’s true. And if we go back to that time 15 years ago and you were in that, was it a nursing home or assisted living?

[00:30:58] PT Moerer: Yeah, it was a nursing home.

[00:31:00] Dr. JB: So you were in the nursing home and you were having this class on Picasso, was this the class that you had created yourself or how did this come into being?

[00:31:10] PT Moerer: Yes, it was, I created this class myself and I guess the first group therapy treatment I was in on. And when I had changed jobs and my manager told me, she goes, we’re going to be doing group therapy. And I honestly didn’t know what she was talking about because I had never done it before. So, the first group that we had that I was involved in. I think the speech therapist had a word game going and she had one of those like flip charts, and they were rolling a dice on the floor that actually had, I think, letters on it. And they asked the residents and patients to come up with something like, say like something that you could find in a five and dime shop that starts with a letter A. And so, I was helping get patients into the room and they were doing some warmup exercises with their arms and their legs, and as I rolled this patient into the room in their wheelchair, I noticed that the amount of words on the board went from like 50 to 150. And I was looking at these patients and thinking, to me, these patients had some degree of dementia and they didn’t look like overly active. I mean, they’re, I guess what I’m saying is I just wasn’t expecting this, and I feel like that was my “aha!” moment, seeing how people interacted in groups. And there’s all kinds of research about how face-to-face interaction is so incredibly healthy for you. And that’s what I teach a lot right now is the benefits of being face-to-face with people. And so I did develop from that, I was so impressed that I was in on every group that we did. And I love to do a Swiss ball group where I have one person sit on the Swiss ball, the big exercise balls, and I’m usually behind them holding on to them. I’m sitting on a stool, I’m holding onto them, and then we interact with all the other people in the group and everybody gets their turn on the Swiss ball and what we’re teaching their body and their brain, along with the interactions from the group and the comradery that’s built up in a week or two, and we play like a memory game with it, and we’re just hitting all kinds of intelligences and building that up.

[00:33:26] And people really do love competition. And if you put a ball within that group, if you would put a ball on the floor and have them kick it, there’s so much more activity than if it would just be a one-on-one situation. So I always walk away from the group and I say, I could have never set this up. Like what happened, I could never set that up one-on-one, because I see the patients extending themselves so much more. So that’s why I got, that’s what drove me to build all these group therapy sessions. And we have like a scavenger hunt and we did things, like decorating the dining room and we have fine motor activities, gross motor activities, balance, reaching, range of motion, strengthening. And then people get to sit with them, what they did, like with their paintings, so we would hang them up on the walls so that when they came back to the therapy room the next day, they have the memories and they were proud of themselves. They have that feeling of pride. Same thing with decorating the dining room, we usually did it around the holidays, so they went to the same dining room every day and could enjoy that. It was a sense of sense of accomplishment and so, I think what we’re doing, we’re taking therapy and we’re just kind of maximizing it and enhancing it in a way. And that’s what I try to do for people.

[00:34:45] All people, even like I talked to some architects and designers, and how can we change the physical space to stimulate the brain and the body and the spirit, not only of the patients, but the healthcare workers. How can we make an impact on people through what they see and what they do? And I don’t really want people to get too comfortable in a situation because I want them to challenge their body and brain every day, so I try to mix it up and so that’s a part of my method and my theory. And it’s funny that really, if I hadn’t changed jobs so many times and hadn’t come across that multidisciplinary group therapy, I really would never have developed this. And really that is what is keeping me going now. In my future, like I’m pivoting into kind of a little bit of a different career or a career with a little different twist on it, but I can kind of go back to that situation and say, this is where it started.

[00:35:45] Dr. JB: Every experience you have in life happens for a reason.

[00:35:49] PT Moerer: Yes, I truly believe that. I do. And I think we do have to have patience and I’m not sure where, I mean, I could have ended up somewhere else in some other field or some other, but I will accept the fact that, it was what it was. And even though I had those disappointing feelings during my career, I still feel like I was persistent enough to get to where I am today. And I hope this next five to ten years is really a creative time in my life and I really still want to help people. I’m so passionate about personal development and I care so much that people do continue to personally personally develop. And I’m hoping that this next phase, that my ideas and thoughts and what I’ve built up and my art, I hope I can just continue to help people with personal development.

[00:36:46] Dr. JB: Well, it sounds to me like you’re doing an amazing job currently and that you are thinking outside the box, but still being effective.

[00:36:53] PT Moerer: Oh, well, thank you. Thank you. I’m trying, I really, really am.

[00:36:59] Dr. JB: And it’s amazing how you’ve been able to manage the creativity part, like merge the two, creativity and physical therapy, and the patients have an end product that they can hold onto and be proud of what they’ve accomplished.

[00:37:13] PT Moerer: Yes, that definitely is my goal.

[00:37:18] Dr. JB: So with that being said, if my listener wanted to get in touch with you and find out more about what you do, how can they do that?

[00:37:26] PT Moerer: I have a website and it’s a teresamoerer.com, and I have an email there. I also have a, you can get on a 20 minute call with me and it’s a free call and it’s just kind of a strategy session where if you have a question or if you have an issue or problem that you want to manage through caregiving or proactive aging, I would love to help with that, or even in your business. And I do teach a course for therapists, physical, occupational, and speech therapists too, it is on group therapy treatments. And let’s see, I really am wanting to delve into more industries, so if you’re feeling stuck in your business and you want to propel and go forward, I have a lot of great tools that I have picked up over the years that helped people maximize their function in life and business. So yeah, that would be placed to get ahold of me is on my website.

[00:38:24] Dr. JB: All right, perfect. And in closing, do you have any words of wisdom for my listeners?

[00:38:30] PT Moerer: Yes. I would say get started today with something that you can be creative with, it might be writing a song or painting a picture or developing a new recipe or, however you can be creative. Don’t ignore that part of your personhood, because I believe that creativity helps your mind and your body grow. And in the end, what you’ll have is you’ll have some joy that this’ll bring to you and it will really propel you forward in life. So I would pick something creatively to do. I normally tell people, just start today with something, a health strategy. But I would like to say, find that creative outlet that is going to move you forward as a professional. And it’s also caring for yourself and it’s caring for a part of you that you might be ignoring at this time due to other life demands.

[00:39:36] Dr. JB: Who says a doc can’t rap? D O C T O R J B. The greatest doctor to ever touch the mic. The greatest podcast ever broadcasted or prerecorded. Come learn some. Each one, teach one. I’m done.