February | 2026 | Acute Conversations

Show Notes

As APTA’s Combined Sections Meeting heads to Anaheim, this special episode offers a behind-the-scenes look at how acute care programming comes together — and how clinicians can prepare with purpose. Co-hosts Dr. Leo Arguelles and Dr. Nicole Neveau are joined by James Crick, PT, DPT, PhD, and Jean Woolford, PT, DPT, co-chairs of acute care programming for CSM, to discuss session planning, emerging themes, and practical tips for navigating the conference and making meaningful professional connections.

Today’s Guests:

Enjeen Wolford, PTA

enjeen@gmail.com

James P. Crick, Jr., PT, DPT, PhD

jamescrickdpt@gmail.com

Co-Chairs, CSM Education Programming, APTA Acute Care

Guest Quotes:

5:28 “ Our big goal is to cultivate and bring up the new speakers and the people that have never spoken in a conference before. That’s our big push…”

8:49 “ This is the place to network and to connect. That is the most important and valuable thing that I would give anybody who’s new or newer to attending CSM.”

27:46 “ So comfortable shoes are definite must!”

27:50 “I’ll remember the first time I ever went to CSM I walked in and I couldn’t believe the masses of people that were crossing the street and walking around, and they were all PTs or PTAs, all of them.

They just took over the city. The whole city was taken over and it’s a lot, but it’s so energetic. It’s so much fun and there’s so many great things you can get there.”

Rapid Responses:

If you had to go to work at Disneyland as a Disney character for the day, which character would you pick?

James: “ I’ll go with Aladdin. I actually have one of my first jobs in acute care in Naples, Florida. Shout out Naples Community Hospital. They I had a nurse who said. Did you know that your hair looks like Aladdin? Me? A lot of always will be Aladdin from here on out.”

Enjeen: Goofy

You know you work in acute care when…

Enjeen: “When you have to go look for your nurse on the floor before you see a patient.”

James: “So it’s standing at the bedside first time in a long time and they get to embrace for, physically for the first time in a long time. The therapeutic hug.”

Links:

Acute Care CSM 2026 Programming: https://apta.confex.com/apta/csm2026/meetingapp.cgi/Subject/220

APTA CSM Event App: https://csm.apta.org/programming/csm-events-app

APTA CSM Proposal and Abstract Submissions: https://csm.apta.org/programming/csm-submissions

🎧 Connect with Our Hosts

Leo Arguelles (pronounced LEE-O R-GWELL-IS)

📧 largue2@uic.edu

🐦 Twitter: @LeoArguellesPT

Nicole Neveau, PT, DPT, NCS

📧 ngunder1@gmail.com

🔗 LinkedIn: Nicole Neveau

Danny Young, PT, DPT, PhD

📧 daniel.young@unlv.edu

🐦 X: @DLYoungDPTPhD

🌐 Bluesky: @dlyoungdptphd.bsky.social

🎧 Listen now on Spotify | Apple Podcasts

(Or wherever you get your podcasts)

#AcuteCare #PhysicalTherapy #ClinicalEducation #HealthcareLeadership

Interested in being a future guest?

APTA Acute Care:

Website

Awards

Journal Access

https://www.aptaacutecare.org/page/AspireandAchieveMentorshipProgram

Twitter @AcuteCareAPTA

Facebook APTA Acute Care

Instagram @AcademyAcutePT

YouTube APTA Acute Care Podcast

APTA Acute Care Resources

APTA Adult Vital Signs

APTA Lab Values Document

Webinar Recordings

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Show Notes:

How do physical therapists decide who needs therapy today—and how often—when resources are limited and patient needs change by the hour?

In this episode of Acute Conversations, hosts Leo Arguelles and Daniel Young sit down with Joshua Johnson, Sandra Passek, and Brittany Lapin to unpack the development and validation of PT-PENCIL, a clinical decision support tool designed to help acute care PTs prioritize care using real-world data.

The conversation goes beyond algorithms. The guests walk through how a multidisciplinary learning community shaped PT-PENCIL, why documentation quality matters more than we think, and how predictive models can support—rather than replace—clinical judgment. They also tackle the realities of “it depends,” workflow integration, and why identifying patients on the fence may be where therapy makes the biggest impact.

This episode is a must-listen for clinicians, educators, and leaders navigating triage, staffing, and value-based care in today’s hospitals.

Today’s Guests:

Joshua Johnson PT, DPT, PhD

joshua.johnson@duke.edu

Sandra Passek PT, DPT, Rehabilitation Manager Clinical Informatics at Cleveland Clinic

Brittany Lapin PhD, Associate Professor of Biostatistics

lapinb@ccf.org

https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittany-lapin-004710b/

Guest Quotes:

7:44 “ I can’t help therapists set a frequency at the outset of a patient’s hospitalization. The best thing we could do and what we felt like really was the most appropriate thing to do was help therapists recognize which patients they needed to see the next day.”

20:43 “really what we found is that everybody benefits from PT. And so that ended up having a lot of discussions with the learning community about how do we then flag patients based on like clinically driven decisions rather than just the statistical model?”

32:27 “ So while we said a lot about helping individual clinicians make decisions about triage. I also think that there’s an opportunity here for managers and leaders to think through, how can I do something like that to support the clinicians that work for me.”

Rapid Responses:

What patient population do you enjoy thinking about or working with the most?

Brittany: “ As a statistician, I like surgical patients the most because there’s a date, there’s a pre and there’s a post.”

Sandi “I like the geriatric population. It doesn’t matter what it is. I think there’s just a lot to learn from them.”

Josh “ When I see patients I’m usually on our neurological floor and I really enjoy that. But I’ll admit a bias that I’ve, this little bit of time that I’ve spent in cardiovascular ICUs have been absolutely fascinating. And if I were to do full-time clinical care, I’d want to get trained to really take care of that population.”

You know you work in acute care when…

Josh “ Your treatment plan changes three times before you make it from the doorway to the edge of the bed.”

Sandi “Things change all the time in acute care. You just have to be ready for it. You have to be resilient and just move with it.”

Brittany “ 📍 Lots of sensitivity analysis with your/any studies.”