Physical Therapy Month Spotlight—Dr. PJ Christopherson, DPT

Dr. PJ and family: Sarah, Cooper, Declan & Micah

It would give us no greater pleasure than to shine the spotlight on EVERY one of our providers in October, otherwise known as National Physical Therapy Month, but that ain’t going to happen.

This is a blog, not a book.

So we are choosing to introduce you to PJ Christopherson, and not just because of what he brings to our practice.

He had us with the first sentence that came out of his mouth.

“Yeah, I really tried to talk myself out of going into the PT profession. Because of my mom.”

Wait, what?

A Shawano native, Christopherson grew up with physical therapy. No, this is not an injury story. His mother, physical therapist Jean Darling, has been a fixture in the community’s health and fitness scene for a lifetime. Suffice to say Christopherson had significant exposure to all things PT.

“My mom lived and breathed physical therapy, so I was around it a lot,” Christopherson said. “But for some reason—and I’m not sure what that reason was—I thought of doing something else. Maybe I just didn’t want to pick something because my mom did.”

Christopherson nevertheless found himself gravitating to the health field. His high school anatomy class was an early inspiration; later, an introductory course on health careers at UW-La Crosse revealed the variety of career opportunities beyond PT that were available to him.

Following completion of the course, a turning point.

“Not sure I’d call it closure, but I had this acceptance that PT could actually be something I could see myself doing,” Christopherson said. “Maybe it was on my radar all along.”

Fast forward, Christopherson would earn his bachelor’s degree in Exercise & Sports Science and then (of course!) his Doctorate of Physical Therapy, both at UW-La Crosse. Newly engaged, Christopherson and his wife Sarah moved to the Milwaukee area, where she attended graduate school and he began his career at a small private physical therapy practice.

Not that he didn’t consider other options, including one at Advanced PT, the very place where his mom practiced and thrived.

“Fresh out of school I actually interviewed with (Advanced PT president and co-founder) Rob Worth for a job,” Christopherson said. “At that point, I felt like branching out a bit, doing my own thing.”

A year later, the couple—he from Shawano and she from La Crescent, MN—had the desire to get back to a smaller community. A job at Advanced PT’s Ripon clinic became available, so the Christophersons found themselves headed right where they hoped they’d be.

Now Clinic Director, Christopherson divides his time serving patients in several capacities. He works with his patients at the clinic on Eureka Street, which also happens to be the near-site clinic for the Ripon Area School District (RASD). Advanced supplies PT services to all RASD employees and is part of the care team delivering high-quality, low-cost care to the district since they recently transitioned to a self-funded health care plan.

The relationship began when the district’s primary care physician needed space. His arrival at 402 Eureka Street resulted in conversations (Advanced PT assists several districts with their healthcare via direct contracts) that led to the establishment of the near-site clinic with a range of providers, part of the district’s overall strategy to reduce costs by offering health services to employees free of charge.

“Being part of this means we can really help people on a community-wide level,” Christopherson said.

Christopherson also finds himself as part of the industrial team at Advanced, providing onsite physical therapy, injury management and rehabilitation services to employees at a manufacturing company in a nearby community.

“With these relationships, we’re more than just a provider of services,” Christopherson said. “We’re part of these communities, growing with them and making them stronger.”

Speaking of growing, the Christophersons are the proud parents of three young children; recently they moved to a larger house to accommodate the needs of the family and the extra space they were looking for. They both love where they live (Sarah is a home health occupational therapist), a beautiful area of closely knit communities with small-town values, thriving and upbeat downtowns, a wide variety of recreational opportunities and the convenience of being close to larger metropolitan areas.

“My Milwaukee friends joke that I live in the middle of nowhere,” Christopherson said. “No way. I live in the middle of everywhere!”

Compared to his Milwaukee experience (he also completed a physical therapy internship with the Milwaukee Brewers, providing orthopedic evaluations for prospects at their spring training facility in Arizona), Christopherson finds his current schedule just as jam-packed, perhaps even more so.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’m in the clinic four days, then one day a week I’m onsite, so I see a little bit of everything, neck to jaws, knees to ankles to shoulders, vertigo patients,” he said. “If you walk in the door, I will see you for X, Y or Z.”

That ability to treat a wide variety of patients is perhaps a gift from his mother, whose resume is ridiculously robust. The fact that he chose to follow in her footsteps makes her very happy, which has upsides when you have a three, two and one-year-old.

“Mom comes down from Shawano every week to babysit,” he said. “That’s been a game-changer.”

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To learn more about Dr. PJ and/or the Ripon clinic, click here.