When she’s not at the clinic, odds are you’ll find physical therapist and clinic director of Therapeutic Associates Newberg Physical Therapy Anne Jeffery on an outdoor adventure with her family. While she embraces every opportunity to be outside no matter what the weather or time of year, this young mom is equally as passionate about helping others improve their quality of life through her role as a PT and wishes everyone knew how many different conditions and situations physical therapy can address.
Q&A with Anne Jeffery
Q: What’s your most-used mobile app?
Probably all the main ones such as my Outlook and my mail. I’m on Instagram a bit. But, I think Spotify might be actually one of my top ones. I love to listen to music, but also my son is really into Thomas the Train and there’s a Thomas the Train podcast. So, we listen to that on the way home from his preschool every day.
Q: Aside from Thomas the Train podcasts and books, which are likely hard to beat, is there something you like to listen to or read?
This is a nerd alert … So, I would say what I’ve been binge-reading is Pat Lencioni. He’s an author of business leadership type of reading, but his writing style is all fables! So, I will literally start and finish one of his books in a weekend, and I’ve been through four or five of them in the past couple of months.
Q: When your nose isn’t in a Pat Lencioni book, how do you like to spend a day off?
When I have a day off, it always involves spending time with my husband and my 3-year-old son. We love to be outside.
In the summer we’re always camping, hiking, fly fishing, out on the boat, barbecuing, that sort of thing.
In the winter we do a whole lot of snowshoeing. We like to go up to the mountain and we’ve got a Thule chariot – it’s like a running stroller/bike trailer and then it also has ski inserts we can put on it. So, my husband and I will be snowshoeing, pulling the kid behind, and he’ll take a nap in there. He gets all cozy.
Yeah, we love to be outside and that’s where we find life. And just with family. So that is awesome.
Q: Fishing, snowshoeing … what about other sports – do you have a favorite?
I grew up playing basketball. Basketball was life! I still love watching basketball, but I’ve kind of shifted with my knee injuries over the years into long-distance running as what I really enjoy doing. I did one full marathon … not sure I’ll do that again, but I like half marathon distances. Otherwise, cycling and hiking and really just being outside.
Q: If you could time travel, when and where would you go?
So, I think if I could time travel, I would actually go ahead because I’m really excited to see who my son grows up to be. He’s 3 right now and a lot of people have told me, oh, you’re gonna miss the baby phase, and I haven’t felt that way. I’ve been kind of like … every year I love who he’s becoming, and so I’m really curious who he’s going to be and what he’s going to be into when he’s in junior high and in high school.
Q: Did you know what you wanted to be when you were in high school?
My journey to becoming a physical therapist started in high school when I ended up tearing my ACL playing basketball. I was 18 years old and went through a lot of physical therapy myself, so that was my first exposure to the field. Interestingly, at the time I was so driven to work with athletes that I was debating between becoming an athletic trainer or a physical therapist. Then my mom was in an accident where she had a pretty significant fracture of her pelvis and was in the hospital for a couple of weeks, and then in a wheelchair, and got back to walking with the help of PT. This whole other lens of watching her work with hospital inpatient PT acute care, and then she had home health coming in and helping her, and then I got to take her to her outpatient visits, and it just ended up being the deciding factor for me where I saw how rewarding physical therapy can be as a profession.
Q: What do you love about being a PT?
I love being a physical therapist for that connection piece. I often reflect on all the different types of people I get to work with every day that I would never get to meet or get to know if it weren’t for my job. It’s not uncommon for a patient to leave PT with just a reflection that it’s been a life-changing experience, and it’s really humbling for me. I just feel honored to be able to play a role in their story and see their quality of life improve and see them meet the goals that they set.
Q: What is your most important personal attribute as a physical therapist?
I think my compassion is probably the biggest thing. I really care about what my patients are thinking and feeling, and it’s really important to me to understand their perspective, to really listen and empathize. I think if they can feel that I really care about them, that’s going to help them to get better. I often have the ability to just look my patient in the eye and say, “I relate. I’ve been there in your shoes.” I’ve dealt with knee surgery, whiplash, going through pregnancy and having pelvic floor issues. Letting someone know they’re not alone and I that I truly want to help them to get through this … it’s that compassion and empathy piece that I love.
Q: What do you wish everyone knew about what physical therapy is?
I wish everybody knew all the different things we treat in physical therapy. So often people know that we treat postoperative conditions or chronic pain or some of the classics. But we also treat things that aren’t pain-related, like urinary incontinence, or constipation in terms of the pelvic floor side of things for example. We also treat balance dysfunction or gate issues and we address fall risk for older adults. So, I’d love for people to realize that there’s just a whole host of things that we treat outside of the typical physical therapy box.
We look forward to being a part of your healthcare team.
At Therapeutic Associates in Sherwood, we treat the full spectrum of patients from infants and young children to high school and college athletes to weekend warriors and adults who are simply dealing with aches and pains from their 9-to-5. We also really value the treatment we can offer for older adults who are navigating the pains and conditions that come naturally with age.
