The origin of our practice happened incidentally at the American College of Sports Medicine meeting about 4-5 years ago. Garrett and I have been friends since 2001, and whenever we happened to be at the same meeting, we would try to get to dinner and chat.
Both of us were part of large practices- Garrett in private practice, and I was in a large University practice- and we were noticing that the conversations we were having at work were rarely about the things that we thought were the most important. In particular, we thought that medical practices were not spending enough time prioritizing happiness.
Around this time, there was a trend in the world of psychology to focus on the psychology of happiness. One key insight was recognizing that happiness is not the absence of sadness, but is an independent concept. Instead of focusing on depression and misery, there was an emerging science of studying happy people, and figuring out how to develop deliberate tactics to become happier. Some excellent resources on this topic can be found here and here.
Several years later, Garrett and I both made a decision (by fate, we made the decision within 2 hours of one another, even though we were living on opposite sides of the country) to make a change to our practices, and I left academia to join Garrett. It's been a great decision.
One of the things that I think other clinicians find striking when they visit our office is how strongly we prioritize happiness. While we pride ourselves on technical excellence, particularly our skill with musculoskeletal ultrasound, our #1 operational principle is prioritizing happiness. Traditionally, clinicans often define themselves by body part, saying things like "I'm a spine guy" or "I'm the knee guy."
We like to define ourselves by how we do things, rather than what we do. We're "fun and happy guys," and our hope is that for patients, that makes all the difference.
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