Founded in 2022, Cultivate Physical Therapy & Wellness Services is the culmination of years of work towards improving the quality of physical therapy care in the San Diego community. As a physical therapist and educator, Dr. Andrew Pavlov has spent years both treating patients in San Diego and teaching the next generation of PTs who will work in the San Diego area and beyond, and it was through these experiences that he decided to create Cultivate. To begin— good, patient-centered care revolves around the patient (it is called patient-centered for a reason), and it starts with uncompromised tailor-made assessments, adequate treatment time and specific programming for each person. Cultivate serves patients and mentors PTs to ensure that their patients are cared for, listened to, and given 1-1 undivided attention.

Secondly, from the student and novice PT perspective, mentorship and growth opportunities were often promised, but not fulfilled. A recent study of over 1600 new grad PTs looked at their top considerations when coming out of school and looking for a job and found some interesting results. Nearly 43% of the respondents said mentorship was their top consideration when looking for a job, 3x more important than compensation (13.7%). So why is mentorship so hard to provide? Likely, it comes down to three things: 1) time; 2) money; and 3) willing mentors. In the clinic, things are busy – there are patients coming in and out, phones ringing, people in the waiting room, and medical documentation to be completed. Time is a commodity, so often, although there is desire for mentoring to be done, it is resigned for brief lunch-time discussions or not done at all. Clinics are also driven by their bottom line (they must stay open and help their communities after all), but if mentoring is happening during productive hours, it often means you are seeing less patients, or – the person who is mentoring you is seeing less patients. Some clinics are okay with this (Dr. Pavlov worked at a San Diego clinic that really valued the education and mentorship of their therapists, but, they are in the minority of clinics overall). This gets into the third issue of having a willing mentor. It’s likely that most people got into the physical therapy field to make a difference and have been mentored or have been the mentor at some point in their careers. However, in the clinic, the mentors are usually the more experienced clinicians who are also typically in managerial roles. These people would love to give mentorship to their staff, but often, an addition to treating their own patients, have managerial and administrative duties on their plate that prevent them from giving the mentorship they would like. But what if that mentor was someone who didn’t have a managerial role in the clinic, kept hours productive, and could help those younger PTs improve their effectiveness and confidence quickly and easily?

With skills in both clinical, direct 1-1 patient care, and in educating and mentoring young physical therapists and students alike, Dr. Pavlov saw the opportunity to create something unique, and thus, Cultivate was born. Offering 1-1 direct orthopedic and sports physical therapy sessions both in-person and online, as well as mentoring and consulting services to both individual PTs and clinics in Southern California, Cultivate Physical Therapy & Wellness Services is positioned to make a difference in the lives of both patients and PTs alike.

Cultivate - Inspire Growth.