Elena Vargas, PT, DPT
Clinical Director · Spine and persistent pain · Room 1
Elena opened this practice in 2011 after nine years in a hospital outpatient department, and the shape of the place is hers: an open gym floor rather than a row of curtained cubicles, because the treatment is the exercise and exercise is not a private act. She takes the difficult referrals — the back that three courses of therapy have not changed, the person who has been told their spine is crumbling, the patient who arrives with a folder of scans and no explanation of any of them. She is the clinician here most likely to tell you that you need fewer appointments than you were expecting.
How they work. Find out what you cannot do, work out why, and change that. She spends the first appointment on history rather than on treatment, because the examination that follows is only as good as the questions before it. Expect to be given three things to do rather than eleven, and expect to be asked at every visit whether you actually did them — not to catch you out, but because a programme nobody follows is a programme that needs changing.
Mostly sees. Low back and neck pain, Sciatica, Persistent pain, Second opinions.
Speaks. English, Spanish. Here since 2011.
Marcus Whitfield, PT, DPT
Physical Therapist · Sports injury and post-surgical rehabilitation · Room 2
Marcus runs the post-surgical and return-to-sport work here, which means he is the person most often telling somebody they are not ready. He tests rather than estimates: strength symmetry on a dynamometer, hop distance measured on the floor, and the movement that caused the injury performed at speed while he watches. He keeps the numbers and shows them to you, because an athlete who can see the gap closing argues about the timeline far less than one who is only told about it.
How they work. Criteria, not calendars. He writes the return-to-play tests down at the first appointment so that nobody renegotiates them in month eight, and he is candid that the hardest part of his job is the fortnight when you feel completely fine and are measurably not. He loads people harder than they expect and explains exactly why each week.
Mostly sees. ACL reconstruction, Rotator cuff repair, Return to sport, Muscle strains.
Speaks. English. Here since 2014.
Priya Raghunathan, PT, DPT
Physical Therapist · Vestibular and neurological rehabilitation · Room 3
Priya sees the dizziness, the balance problems and most of the neurological rehabilitation in this building. A large share of what arrives in her room is positional vertigo, which is often fixed inside one appointment — and she is emphatic that a clinic which books you a course of twelve for it is selling you eleven you do not need. The rest of her list is the opposite: stroke and Parkinson's work measured in months, where the active ingredient is how much you practise between visits.
How they work. Test the thing, treat the thing, retest the thing. She will tell you at the first appointment roughly how many visits your problem should take and what it means if it has not moved by then, which for positional vertigo is usually three. For the long conditions she plans in blocks with maintenance between them, because gains that are not maintained do not stay.
Mostly sees. Vertigo and BPPV, Stroke rehabilitation, Parkinson's disease, Balance and falls.
Speaks. English, Tamil, Hindi. Here since 2016.
Sofia Almeida, PT, DPT
Physical Therapist · Pelvic health · Room 4
Sofia built the pelvic health service here and sees every appointment in it, in a private room with the door closed and no student observing unless you have said yes. Most of her patients have been living with the problem for years before mentioning it to anybody, and a fair number were told it was a normal consequence of childbirth or of age. Common is not the same as normal, and it is not the same as untreatable.
How they work. Explain what the examination involves before it happens, and never proceed with a part of it you have not agreed to. She teaches the muscle work properly rather than handing over a leaflet, because the commonest reason pelvic floor training fails is that it is being done wrong and nobody has checked. Progress is measured in what you can do without planning around a lavatory.
Mostly sees. Stress incontinence, Pelvic pain, Postnatal recovery, After prostate surgery.
Speaks. English, Portuguese, Spanish. Here since 2018.
Daniel Okonkwo, PT, DPT
Physical Therapist · Older adults and joint replacement · Room 5
Daniel looks after most of the joint replacement rehabilitation and the older adults on the list, and he is the loudest voice in this building against training people too lightly. Resistance that looks prudent frequently does nothing at all, and the eighty-year-old who cannot get off a low chair does not need a resistance band — they need to get stronger, which is achievable and is achieved by lifting meaningful weight. He is patient about the fortnight it takes to persuade somebody of that.
How they work. Measure it, load it, measure it again. Sit-to-stand counts, walking distance, and the stairs at home rather than the ones in a textbook. He asks what your building's entrance actually looks like and trains for that, because a discharge that works in the clinic and fails at your front door is not a discharge.
Mostly sees. Knee and hip replacement, Falls prevention, Strength in later life, Walking tolerance.
Speaks. English, Igbo. Here since 2019.
