We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Katherine Rush a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Katherine , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about the best advice you’ve ever given to a client? (Please note this response is for education/entertainment purposes only and shouldn’t be construed as advice for the reader)

Several years ago I had a patient who was referred to me for pelvic pain. She was in excruciating pain. Because of her pain she was unable to sit very long, she ended up losing her job and any sort of intercourse was out of the question. The pain was taking over her life and had affected her mental health, her finances and her marriage. After listening to her story, she also mentioned that the pain was worst during her periods. So I referred her to an excision specialist for suspected endometriosis. She did end up having endometriosis that was confirmed by surgery. After surgery, she came back to me for follow-up and we were able to focus on relaxation techniques that allowed her to return to a completely normal life without any pain. It’s important to remember that with chronic pain you typically need a team of professionals to get good results.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

When I first started working physical therapy, I was working in a large hospital system. I was seeing typical physical therapy patients, people with knee surgery, low back pain, teaching people to walk again after they had a stroke, etc. After a few years of doing this, one of my colleagues started a pelvic health program. Unfortunately, she dealt with some personal medical issues and she had to quit working for a while. During this time, my boss nominated me to work in pelvic health. I wasn’t particularly excited about it. However, after I did all the training and started seeing patients i began to realize how life changing it really was. I’d had a patient who had been considering suicide because she couldn’t leave the house secondary to severe fecal incontinence. It was so bad, that if she had an accident there was no diaper that could contain it and she had to take a shower. After just a few visits of physical therapy she was able to leave her house and drive across the state to see her son. She was no longer considering suicide. I had another patient who was in the midst of a divorce. Intercourse was so incredibly painful for her she thought it would be better to be separated. Once we had been working with her in physical therapy for just a handful of visits, she was able to have intercourse again and ultimately she and her husband reconnected. I saw these patients 20 years ago- and since then I have seen hundreds of people reap the life changing benefits of having a healthy pelvic floor. So while I was initially reluctant to do this type of physical therapy, the transformations the patients have experienced made me love being part of their healing journey.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

After working in the hospital system for many years, it became obvious to me that pelvic health was not as prioritized within the hospital system as it should be. No advertising was being done, so very few patients were being educated about how important pelvic health was. I decided I really needed to own my own business so that I could do the education to the public that was needed. It was a terrible time in my personal life to open a business. I had four small children, the oldest was eight at the time the youngest was one. My father had severe Parkinson’s and needed a significant amount of help, and my mother had severe dementia. But I went ahead and opened my own clinic anyway. I am so glad I did. We are now able to provide high level of customer service for each patient, something that was simply not done in a large hospital system. The cost of the patient is significantly lower, and I’ve been able to accomplish the in-person and online education that people have needed.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I found it’s important not to rely on just one strategy. Marketing is best done with multiple strategies. I spend most of my focus on referrals from current patients, and doing small workshops within the community. But it’s also important to at least spend some of the budget on online marketing with Google, Facebook and social media.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.theperfectpelvis.com
• Instagram: Theperfectpelvis
• Facebook: The Perfect Pelvis

Image Credits
Haley Leone Photography for the headshot