Shelly Denes

I'd say it's just attitude, you know, wanting to know a lot, being active, and not being close-minded. I'm passionate about my job and passionate about what I've done. I'm a big fighter. Actually, I just had open-heart surgery six weeks ago, so I'm still out there fighting. I've had a huge year - I lost my husband in August - so I've had a challenging time, but you gotta keep fighting. I attribute it to my attitude. And I also have a phenomenal support system, which I think helps everybody, right? Professionally or personally.

The best career advice I ever received was to be myself in my career. When I was applying to be a director of a physical therapy program many, many years ago, I went and met with another therapist that I was very proud to know. I thought, well, I need to be a leader like she is. And she said to me, no, you gotta be a leader like you. Use your personality within what you are. She was very different than I was, and it's true. You gotta do it with what your personality is. Just because somebody else is a great leader, or a great therapist, or a great whatever, it's what their personality is to it. Yours won't necessarily be the same. In fact, it probably isn't. Go with how you do it, you know? And I think I practiced that in my career. I'm kind of a little bit of a pistol, and so I practice that way. I challenge my patients. So, I think you have to work within whatever your personality is.

Be open-minded. Look at this from a global perspective. You know, take into account a lot of the stuff that they're giving, but read and research and see what's out there, and just don't take one point of view, or whatever. I mean, there's a lot of stuff out there. Just be open-minded to a lot of it, you know? Empower yourself to know a lot of stuff, and keep doing it, you know? Not just with what you learned today. Every day we're learning new stuff, that's what I would say. And there's a lot of stuff out there, you gotta be careful what you're reading. ChatGPT is not always correct. Now we have AI, and how much is that gonna affect all of it, you know? Good and bad. That's the challenges going forward. I would say people in the field have to really watch truth and what's not.

Well, medicine has changed. It's become a big business, unfortunately. And so, I'm kind of glad that I'm at the end of that part, and I don't have to deal with all that, because even in the last few years that I was in a clinic setting, it was insurance. What will insurance cover? What they won't cover? And how many certifications are acknowledged, and how many times you have to apply to make sure that they'll let you do this. I think everything has become big business. I think that's a challenge for physical therapy, medicine. I think that's a challenge for a lot of activities, a lot of things. So, I think that's a challenge. That makes it even more important that people like me are getting education out there, improving the education and the information and the knowledge that's out there from new stuff, like COVID or sleep deprivation, and how important this is in the treatment, and that we can't just look at, okay, yeah, they got hip pain. Well, their walking might be affected, and the shoulder might, or maybe they almost fell. So, to keep it a global kind of thing, I think it's challenging, because the way medicine is going, it's a big business. It wasn't before.

I just think you have to, whatever you believe, you should believe, and don't take crap. I think it's attitude towards the truth, okay? There's not one truth, but just don't get soaked up in, you know, somebody says, here's a shortcut that we can take. And guess what? Generally, that isn't true. I mean, I think we just, you gotta go with what your values are and stick with it. There's a lot of fraud out there. People gravitate, oh, here's the cheapest way, or the shortest way. It doesn't work. I mean, I think you just have to be true to your values and true to what makes sense to you.