We talk a lot on this site about what mentorship means here. Two protected hours a week. Twenty-four hours in your first twelve weeks. A real curriculum instead of a login and a hallway conversation. Those numbers matter, but they can also start to sound like marketing copy after a while. So instead of just telling you again, we sat down with clinicians who actually went through the program and asked them to describe it in their own words.
Dr. Nick Abbatangelo put it simply when comparing Highbar to what he’d heard about elsewhere. Instead of mentorship being a quick, informal check a couple of times a week, he said, “we actually had a structured session on a weekly basis for a period of months,” and added that the experience “really helped just shape and form my early career.” He wasn’t being polite about it either. He said plainly that it’s “something that certainly sets Highbar apart.”
The two hours are real, and they’re built around you
Dr. Brielle Albertini, one of our Clinic Directors, described the rhythm new grads can expect. Our mentorship runs twelve weeks, with two hours blocked into the schedule every week to spend one on one with a mentor, typically a meeting near the start of the week to talk through what’s coming, and one near the end to go back over what happened before the next week starts.
But the shape of those hours isn’t rigid. As Dr. Caroline Kuppens explained, picking up the same thought, it depends on who you’re working with and what your goals are. “It really can be whatever you want it to be,” she said, and that flexibility is intentional. Maybe that means talking through a tricky case. Maybe it means asking your mentor to co-treat with you, or going to observe how they treat their own patients.
Why protected time is the whole point
If you’ve been interviewing at other clinics, you’ve probably heard the word mentorship in almost every conversation. What you don’t always hear is whether there’s actual time set aside for it. Dr. Farrell O’Shaughnessy was direct about why that matters: “There’s so many clinics out there that don’t offer that block time on the get-go, and how can you learn, and how can you create a community, by just kind of going off on your own.”
She spoke from experience. While she was still at Northeastern trying to decide where to apply, she said mentorship was “definitely up there” on her list, because she wanted to learn from others so she could become a better physical therapist herself.
Matched with intention, not luck of the draw
New grads sometimes worry about who they’ll get paired with, and whether it will be a good fit. Dr. Nick Abbatangelo described being told ahead of time who his mentor would be, someone who had already been practicing for three years as an orthopedic clinical specialist, working with similar populations and similar interests to his own. That pairing wasn’t random. It was set up with his goals in mind before he even walked in the door.
And it isn’t left to chance on the mentor’s side either. As Dr. Brielle Albertini told us, all of our mentors go through the same training, so “whether you are someone starting next month or somebody starting in six months with a totally different mentor, you’re going to still get an excellent experience.”
Being challenged, not just handed answers
Good mentorship isn’t just about getting information. It’s about learning how to think. Dr. Nick Abbatangelo described how his mentor would respond nearly every time he brought him a question. Instead of answering right away, his mentor would ask, “Okay, what are your thoughts?” He described it as a bit of Socratic reasoning, being pushed to work through the problem himself first, and then talking through the rationale and the evidence together afterward. That’s exactly the kind of clinical reasoning we’re trying to build here, not just protocols to follow, but a way of thinking that stays with you long after the twelve weeks end.
A team bigger than your building
Mentorship at Highbar isn’t limited to whoever happens to be in your clinic. Dr. Caroline Kuppens talked about how nice it is to know that expertise travels across our locations, saying it “makes you feel like you’re a bigger team than just your team within the clinic.” If someone down the road has deep experience in neuro or pelvic health or sports, that knowledge is available to you too.
It doesn’t stop at week twelve
Formal mentorship has a clear structure, but the relationship doesn’t just end on schedule. Dr. Caroline Kuppens shared that after she switched clinics and wanted to build more skill with sports patients and higher level athletes, she simply asked for it. “That was organized for me,” she said. “No problem.”
See it for yourself
You’ve read what we say mentorship looks like, and now you’ve heard it from Nick, Brielle, Farrell, and Caroline, the people who actually lived it. If you want to hear more, we mean that literally. Talk to a current clinician about their first twelve weeks, ask us a specific question about the program, or reach out to Dave Pavao, who leads mentorship and clinical growth here, directly. No application required, just a real conversation.