Finding Work

Whatever you do dont bring that up in the interview haha

 

^Stop.

 

I hope you don't work anywhere with the work ethic you have.

 

1) Inpatient acute or OP in smaller or more rural hospital or clinic or 1 patient/hr OP ortho clinic (i.e. ? Nova care)

2) Part time or per diem. You have to commit to doing the best you can during the hours you work. Full time doesn't sound like it'd be fair to an employer or the patients.

3) No SNF and no agencies

4) Don't set the bar for pay low, set it high if anything

 

How about asking yourself for which setting do you feel most prepared? And then start there.

 

What do you think you're entitled to? You show up and everything goes alright and you just get auto pay? That's not how you make things work. Employers don't deserve that.

My Dad worked 80 hour work weeks when adding in the take home during tax seasons and still seemed to support and help put kids through college. You work in healthcare and have some of the best hours in the entire industry with a balanced workday.

Then go work a different job or go into sales. Period. There's always some stress in jobs. Even cleaning porta potties. I cant believe someone would say this after completing a doctoral degree and is willing to accept an incredibly low balled 50k at the drop of a hat when market averages are FAR above that starting. That's a way to incentivize employers to screw over other new grads when the compensation is already awful starting.

It's very likely that you didn't have a job lined up and thought you would get employed at the drop of a hat. I have a lot of friends that did that. Doesn't work like that when you have to get trained up.

You fit the schedule that is needed as a new grad. Avoid an ortho mill if you need to.

Go on youtube and look up how to do a job search. Glassdoor, indeed, monster, etc. Cover letter and one page resume. The market is booming right now. Show up at the door in order to get an interview.

 

Woah. I think some of the replies are harsh. You are being honest about what you are willing to do and what you want in life. That doesn't mean you're going to perform poorly on a job. You're just saying you don't want to work 60 hours a week because you enjoy your time off. Your philosophy on salary is totally understandable. You could make 80k at a busy outpatient clinic and work excessive hours or you could work 40 hours and make 60 to 65k. You choose the latter because you value your life outside of work. PT is not the air you live and breathe. That doesn't make you a bad therapist.

I work at a rural hospital where it is pretty laid back (mixture of outpatient and acute). Now the downside is I rarely get a full 40 hours because we have to flex off if the census is slow or leave as soon as we are done (hourly pay). If you have a substantial amount of student debt, then I would not advise you seek out a job like this.

You can't avoid stress at work because you're interacting with people, but again you can try to find a job that may be less stressful. I would not want to work in inpatient rehab because it sounds like a lot of physical and emotional work. That's just me. Also, when I leave for the day, I am usually done with paperwork aside from an eval. I have two friends in outpatient who have to spend hours after work and on the weekends catching up with documentation. Yikes. They see two to three patients a hour. I see one.

Good luck out there. It took me three weeks to get a job. I felt like I applied to 25 places and only heard back from two.

 

Reread this statement. You said 60-65k which is actually on the low end from what I've heard this past graduation cycle. It's not the number that OP stated.

PT is not the air you live and breathe. That doesn't make you a bad therapist.[/QUOTE]

This is perfectly fine, but you're missing my point which is clearly clouded by my harsh tone. If the OP wants to value their life outside of work more and actively search for any job then do a different field. You can have a balanced life in PT easily....at the same time, your dream job isn't bestowed upon you immediately. You have to be flexible coming out. When someone accepts a 50k job that's a signal to employers that they can get away with a low ball. That's garbage. If it's inevitable then it's inevitable, but to actively look to settle for that shows one doesn't value the skillset and time commitment to be a therapist. It's also apparent that OP is demonstrating a lower commitment to a work ethic.

Some of this may very well be due to feelings of frustration from the start of a job hunt and wanting to work right away or just slowly settle into working due to life stressors. If it's the latter then I'm sorry and I hope things get better, but please go and do per diem work please until things get under control or more balance comes one's way.

If entry level workers don't stick up for themselves then nobody will.

 

In my above post I meant to recommend acute, not inpatient acute. So I meant acute care physical therapy in a hospital, not inpatient rehab. I've worked in many areas of physical therapy and hands down, to me, is the least stressful. Here's my thoughts: no chance of bringing home work, no pressure to "get minutes" (i.e. in a SNF) and no pressure with patients coming in one after the other (i.e. in typical OP ortho clinics) so often times you can actually take the time each patient needs and essentially manage your own schedule (in acute), there is a ton of overlap in physical therapy in terms of philosophy between setting type and probably most apparent in acute, there's lots of need for extensive and diverse knowledge in acute, patient "length of stay" in acute is much shorter than in SNF's and inpatient acute and to an "episode of care" say in a OP ortho clinic (often a couple sessions is good to get them home safely), you can make a big impact with good recommendations and patient/family education, you get to be up and walking all day, you get time to yourself, etc.

My personal main goals for the majority of patients I see in the acute setting are: 1) avoid bed rest during the day as tolerated 2) engage in a walking program as tolerated. Then I alter as indicated.

Downsides of acute: patients on physical therapy service die, communicable diseases, patient/family hardship.

 

I truly do not understand your complaint here. It's as though you're treating all PT positions as commodities that should somehow have a standard price.

What if I could find a job in outpatient ortho working with the population I want to work with, living in the city I want to live in, with a reasonable commute, seeing one patient an hour (my dream scenario). But the employer can only afford to pay so much because revenue is less (lower volume of patients) and costs are more (rent tends to be higher in nice cities). Should I not take the job because it pays less than what you think a PT should be paid even if it's the job I want and it meets my financial needs?

The OP wants a particular kind of job and is willing to make a financial sacrifice to strike his or her desired work/life balance. It's a personal decision. That's not an example of undermining the profession. That's an example of being a reasonable human being who is simply on this forum asking for advice as to how to go about that.

 

Acute care per diem for 2.5 days a week will gross you $50k where I'm from. You will never own a home though and the healthcare exchange may destroy you. Relatively fun place to live. Bring your own water.

 

^Your example is much more specific than what the OP said. In this scenario a lower salary would make sense and that is very hard to find and specific. I think I'm just angsty hearing about low balled salaries and when someone says they will accept a 50k without specifying something like you did that's literally just saying that they want a certain money metric with a lower stress amount. There was nothing specified else really. Read below.

^Per diem wouldn't send a signal that employers can hire full time and pay their workers in peanuts. With people going to schools and getting massive debts, there's a point where you have to talk about a grey line (I say grey since a money metric is subject to a fair amount of personal opinion, but you still need to put your foot down somewhere) regarding professional worth.....and just settling for something hurts other people that may be hired as well.

 

This might be splitting hairs. Full Time (i.e. with benefits) + Low Stress + Specific Geography is going to have similar economic constraints as the more specific picture I tried to paint.

You've identified an underlying angst about this, but I think you may be perceiving a threat where none exists. I don't think you and the OP are operating in the same job market. I get the impression that you'll be willing to put in more effort and seek more challenge (not a value judgement against the OP here, just a reflection of personal priorities which is totally understandable). Salaries are going to fit something like a bell curve, and the go-getters can get more than the folks who want to put things in cruise control for awhile. I think it's a good thing that this profession offers the potential of a financial throttle like that.

If more people want to coast, there will be fewer people in the job market for more challenging roles. Demand is the same but supply decreases? Price goes up. Fine by me.

 

http://www.indeed.com/q-Physical-Therapist-l-Lansdale,-PA-jobs.html

 

Thanks for this. Good perspective.

 

Is this a troll post? lol. Accepting a 50k start for full time work is an insult to this profession.

 

I think the figure of 50k was used more for emphasis. I don't think the OP is deliberately searching for a job that only pays 50k. "We're offering 70k." "Nah, I'll just take 50k if you guys don't stress me out."

 

I agree with the harsher posts. I wouldn't want to hire someone who wants to basically phone in their work, which is what it sounds like the OP wants to do. Being a GOOD PT means thinking, and caring, and reading, and learning, and documenting, and staying current, and listening to your patients, and communicating with referral sources. Not punching a clock. I don't care what setting you work in, they all deserve some degree of dedication.
they could start their own clinic, work as much or as little as they want.

 

Perhaps my job application will appear in your email inbox someday.

 

The harsher tone may be fine regarding the perceptions about the OP's work ethic. The salary bit was blown way out of proportion.

Here's the thing, fury road. Once you find this job you want (and given the market I think you likely will), you're going to want to keep it. It's hard to do that when you give off a vibe that you want your job to be "easy" and that you don't want to put in any time outside of the typical 8 to 5. Patients are going to come under your care and that's an important responsibility. If you're going to be a valuable member of a rehab department's staff, you're going to have to prove that you're worthy of that responsibility. That's going to mean providing empathetic, evidence-based care to your patients. And that means instead of punching the clock on your way out and turning PT "off", you're likely going to have to flip open the laptop and keep yourself immersed in the relevant research that is applicable to your patient caseload, or familiarizing yourself with the pathophysiology of disease states that you are not well acquianted with, etc. And these things aren't typically alotted for during your work day.

So you'll probably find a full time job, and if you approach it the way you've described on this message board, maybe you'll be happy. But your co-workers won't be-they'll think you're lazy, like many of us do here. Worse yet, you're patients likely won't be happy either-getting stuck on your caseload may just prevent them from their optimal outcome. Hopefully they'll at least realize it's just you, not PT in gerneral, that let them down.

 

The people on here are pretty funny....most of you are so PT-brainwashed that you blow everything out of proportion. If you look at the OP's statement, he said he has a lot of other things going on in his life. Are any of you in a position to assume what these things might be? As therapists and/or SPTs, we should have more empathy for people. Oh wait, does that only apply when the person is a patient under your care? Does it only apply when you can put on your therapist hat and be a shell of a person that wears PT blinders? Seems to me that the OP might just end up avoiding burn out and gaining 20 pounds from the vegan diet of chocolate bars that seems to be the PT fad. Someone can function in a job and care about people without being completely consumed by it. Yes, 50k is too low, but it's funny how there was a comment about PTs being underpaid....you all do realize that most of you are willing to work for free? Take work home you're not paid for? You're not helping the profession, you're the problem.

 

I agree with fitchick. Maybe the OP actually doesn't have poor work ethic and maybe he/she isn't lazy. How do we know what is going on with this person? Can really extrapolate much from his/her 2 posts? Maybe give him/her the benefit of the doubt (that much has been earned). Maybe some empathy is in order as fitchick suggests as patients aren't the only ones deservant of it.

 

Wut

Pay everyone's tuition, place food and water on the table, pay for everyone else's healthcare, buy them all new clothing and give them gas money to go to work and then we can probably start talking about working for free every now and then. This is one of the stupidest comments I've ever read.

Are you a trust fund baby?

 

If the person is too stressed out for the job and willing to accept a peanuts salary then go work at publix or lowe's. The pay is awful for the debt to income. Everyone acts like it's okay and makes a conscious decision to take a bad debt to income because there is a lot of reward...... and then a year later after they've planned out living simply after school and being responsible, you get a post about a 40% tuition hike mid program for simulation tables while the students drown in debt nondischargeable to bankruptcy. If someone accepts peanuts then an employer will think they can keep shelling out peanuts and a different grad will be offered the same salary. After their debt payoff, they could be pulling a 20k salary.

You're the problem.

There's a difference between someone asking for emotional help and someone who can be screwing over other grads because they want a less stressful workday. Higher salaries are offered due to factors like extra training time, higher stress, more responsibility etc. as well as supply and demand of course. If the emotional pressure is too much for something, then go and get some help and then do a different field.

 

This statement was interpreted as people are so altruistic or like the job so much that they will work for free to a degree or do extra work after hours without worrying about overtime pay. It is constantly talked on this forum that the low pay longer time in school is outweighed by the workday reward benefit so I interpretted your statement like that..........I dropped a trust fund baby comment to make the point that you need to get paid well for your work to pay the bills but trust fund babies don't.


"Those who are willing to bend over backwards to do work beyond PAID working hours are creating the issue of PTs being overworked and underpaid. When you get out of school and accept the 70k starting salary and end up putting in 60 hours a week, you are essentially lowering your worth to around $22/hr, while the OP would be making $24/hr for 40hrs/wk at his 50k salary."

Considering the fact that SNF work is paying 40-45 an hr you can calculate 40 x 2000 hrs per year = 80,000

That's 50 weeks of 40 hrs a week. Shave off another 4 for 6 weeks total vacation per year and you've got yourself a high 75k+ salary.......if you're working 60 hrs per week then that's stupid and if you want a lowered salary that works for you then just do per diem.

 

I don't take work home. In the words of someone who became famous on YouTube, "Ain't nobody got time fo dat" nor do I work off the clock. None of my peers do either. We're on a LEAN system. I do spend some time reading journals, but I don't consider that a work requirement, I just enjoy it. If I was OP, I would just work part time per diem. Win win for everyone.

Also, what's wrong with chocolate? Don't like dad bods?

 

Notice how the OP has only returned once.

 

Hi fury road!
Per diem all the way. I know some others have mentioned it. I'm just like you: I work to live. I am extremely passionate about the PT field, but I tried traditional full time jobs, and I always wound up working extra hours and feeling burned out. If you're looking for "easy" and "low stress", PT in general is not that...you know this It's stressful physically and emotionally. You can look for easier settings with less crazy of a pace, though. Try nabbing a couple per diem jobs in acute care and/or home health. Both are quite flexible and pay well enough to meet your requirements, especially if you're creative about working on holidays and stuff Good luck and feel free to message me with questions...