An NFL PT Guide to Healing w/ Dave Kempfert :: Ep 87

So I want to... shift a little bit into what you just talked about, helping athletes on the field, because many people don't know how much Bowdoin Joint and Williamson Health Partners do for our schools.

Can you talk a little bit about what services are provided for the Williamson County and now Rutherford schools and how you champion that?

yeah so we're very very blessed to get to be involved as we can and we love doing it which hopefully shows in everything we do so we partner with all the williams county schools several private schools to provide physician sideline coverage and also athletic trainers at all the williams county schools we do this free of charge which is pretty amazing but again we love doing it it's a service the community needs it's a service we want to provide And it's really, really fun because from my perspective as a director of PT and as just, I still see patients.

So seeing patients, it really gives that feel of like I had when I was a professional, right? So somebody gets injured, they see an athletic trainer, that athletic trainer and the coach are aware of everything right off the bat.

They have an orthopedic surgeon involved.

Um, or an MD that translates that, you know, to where they need imaging, what kind of an injury is this timelines, the parents get involved.

Then if it's appropriate for rehab or surgery, then obviously we get that information and we say, Hey, how can we get this person in as fast as possible? So you get this kind of professional feel for high school athletes, which I guarantee you in Montana, I didn't get that back in the day.

You kind of shrugged your shoulders and said, what's going on here? And you kind of worried and you waited for days.

And now we can really expedite and kind of treat these kids like VIPs, get them in right away and determine best plans of care for them.

And hopefully they're usually minor things, but sometimes the major things come along.

And so it's being able to identify that as quickly as possible and give them the education, the confidence they need, that, hey, you're going to be all right.

This is what it's going to look like.

And then that way everybody can collaborate, coaches, ATCs, PTs, all together, which is pretty amazing.

And we're very excited about the Rutherford connection now, too.

And I don't know how big this can go, but I do love that we get a chance to participate like we do.

And my staff loves it, too.

You'll see us on the sidelines at games.

Everybody wants to be a part of it.

It's really good for an old guy in his 50s now to still feel like I can smell the grass and be out there and listen to the calls being made and Friday night lights.

I had a kid at Summit, so I got to see it firsthand from the parent side, too.

And he actually had a hand fracture, unfortunately, in football.

And and so to see my own child go through the process and I really sat back like didn't want to act like I was part of the organization.

I want to act like a dad, not only for my son, but for to see kind of how we did.

Yeah.

And to watch him go through that process and the communication, the education I got, he got a collaboration with the trainer made me feel really good that we're doing a good thing.