Name and Title(s):
Jordana Anderson
Registered Physical Therapist
Where do you work?
Deep Physio (Dawson Creek, BC)
What is the most rewarding part of your job?
I have been a physio for nearly 20 years and I have been fortunate enough to have travelled with my career and work in many different areas of physiotherapy. My passion in my earlier years was sports physio and performance, and working alongside elite athletes. However now, the most rewarding part of my job is educating, mentoring and watching my clinicians over the years grow into amazing diagnostic clinicians and provide an inspiring service to our local community.
Why does physiotherapy matter?
One of the main questions we ask our patients is, what are your past injuries, traumas, or pain? If not presenting with a trauma, most pain and injuries that present themselves in the clinic, are from compensations for past injuries. If not treated and rehabilitated properly, these injuries can cause other issues in the future.
Physiotherapy not only quickens the healing process but also ensures that the injury is treated and rehabilitated properly to prevent future issues. Physiotherapy is an extremely broad profession – from rehabilitating patients to mobilize once again post neurological injury, to improving the quality of movement and performance in sport. In essence, physiotherapists motivate and improve their patient’s quality of life.
What is a common misconception with your work?
This is a great question! That physiotherapists cannot diagnose an injury and they need to see a doctor before seeking a physiotherapy assessment.
What drew you to physical therapy?
I was an elite athlete in my youth and was regularly engaged in physiotherapy due to injuries. I’ve always had a passion for sports physiotherapy and my injuries caused a lot of issues later in my adult life. I loved the aspect of diagnosing the root cause of an issue, treating the injury, and then improving the patient’s performance and quality of life. Like most physiotherapists, I am in my career to motivate and improve my patient’s quality of life, performance, health and well-being.
What is unique about what you do?
I would like to think that I am unique at my job as a physiotherapist. I have branched off in my career, moving away from traditional manual therapy and have used my years of experience, sports performance and courses to functionally and neurologically diagnose the injury/pain.
Still using traditional physiotherapy skills, I have broadened my diagnostic skills and look at the body as a whole to find the root cause of the injury being presented. Because results are proven in the clinic, we have taken that further within our clinic, and have developed a complete mentorship program around this unique way of assessing, diagnosing and treating our patients.
What is one thing we might be surprised to learn about you?
I wanted to move to London or New York and become a fashion designer. I love to create, explore and think outside the box and I now use that as my role as Owner and CEO of Deep Physio.