Carleen Jogodka

Greetings, I’m Carleen. I’m a doctor of physical therapy living in Tucson, Arizona. This year with be my 14th year of practice as a physical therapist full-time in the emergency department.

As a committed and naturally curious person who is dedicated to helping patients achieve results in very stressful conditions, I have spent countless hours of post-doctoral training. I am one of only three PTs nationwide who have worked as long as I have in emergency care, and I am the only board-certified and fellowship trained in orthopedics and manual therapy.

As a former athlete of many sports, I have a commitment to working hard, playing hard. In my 'first' career, I used my bachelor of science degree in microbiology to work as bench medical researcher in primarily immunobiology and genetics. I thrive for process improvement and innovation. Over time, as my interests evolved, I returned to professional school for physical therapy. Public health, biomedical engineering, and forensic research were close contenders in this career change. Because of these other interests, I researched and pursued emergency care practice here in Tucson, at the pioneering hospital in North America for this niche clinical area. To anyone who has witnessed how it functions, it makes sense. Following basic principles of public health, correctly addressing injuries early in the process saves stress, further injury, and cost. Even in standard emergency care, this is not how things are handled. Given the pressures of the environment, providers are trained to save lives (obviously), but for less critical injuries, sub-optimal management gave birth to problems such as our current opiate crisis and surgical interventions that could have been circumvented. On the other hand, correctly recognizing problems that need hospitalization or more immediate medical or surgical intervention can also be identified. The system in the United States contains many competing interests in this arena, and traditionally physical therapists are consulted late in the problem. As a result most PTs are not truly trained to manage patients in this environment. In healthcare markets where competing interests are less and cost containment is a priority (ie. UK and Australia), physiotherapists are front line providers, with published results to back these claims.

I believe using exercise and maintaining fitness is fundamental for basic physical and mental health. The majority of problems I see are ortho