I have no clue what patient population I want to treat - Please please send help!! Any advice welcome!

[PTstudent221]

Hi everyone!

I am a 3rd year DPT student and always envisioned myself going into ortho, I have had 3 clinical rotations thus far (acute, acute with neuro focus, ortho/sports outpatient) I just finished the ortho outpatient clinical and was soooooo anxious and lacked a lot of confidence in treating these patients and Im now doubting myself in the ortho world. I enjoyed my neuro clinical but prefer the outpatient setting and im now considering to try to look into outpatient neuro or potentially inpatient neuro as a future. I keep finding myself going back and forth and honestly am completely conflicted. I don't want to write off ortho because I did enjoy the style of treatments and I like the manual aspect. I just felt like I had no clue what I was doing and that anxiety was extremely unsettling.

Its time to pick my last clinical and have no clue what to pick, Inpatient neuro, outpatient neuro, outpatient ortho.

Please if anyone has any advice or words of wisdom I would really appreciate it because Im so confused and feel completely lost.

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[wiseOldPT]

Was there something about your clinical that caused the anxiety- high patient volume, not a great CI, etc? I'd be tempted to say do another outpatient ortho clinical to try it out again and get more guidance to see if under a different clinic/CI, you'll grow your confidence.

 

[PTstudent221]

Was there something about your clinical that caused the anxiety- high patient volume, not a great CI, etc? I'd be tempted to say do another outpatient ortho clinical to try it out again and get more guidance to see if under a different clinic/CI, you'll grow your confidence.

My CI was great, she was very nice and taught me a lot but I did always feel like I was trying to guess what she would want me to do next, we also had a high athletic population and I didn't receive much info on high level sport specific exercises during our ortho module.

(some background, our Ortho module was interrupted by COVID and we learned everything online, I feel like this is a huge part of my anxiety but I thought it would get better with experience in the clinic, but instead I always felt like I wasn't doing stuff right)

 

[truthseeker]

if you aren't certain, it would probably make more sense to be a generalist at first, treating Ortho and neuro. sometimes if you go down the rabbit hole and stay there in a specialty too long, you lose some of the skills with the other types of patients. I worked exclusively in OP ortho for 5 years in a suburban sports med facility then decided to move back to rural America. When I did that, I had to relearn how to work with neuro patients and inpatients. I was able to do it, but its tough for some people.

 

[Fiveoboy11]

Hi everyone!

I am a 3rd year DPT student and always envisioned myself going into ortho, I have had 3 clinical rotations thus far (acute, acute with neuro focus, ortho/sports outpatient) I just finished the ortho outpatient clinical and was soooooo anxious and lacked a lot of confidence in treating these patients and Im now doubting myself in the ortho world. I enjoyed my neuro clinical but prefer the outpatient setting and im now considering to try to look into outpatient neuro or potentially inpatient neuro as a future. I keep finding myself going back and forth and honestly am completely conflicted. I don't want to write off ortho because I did enjoy the style of treatments and I like the manual aspect. I just felt like I had no clue what I was doing and that anxiety was extremely unsettling.

Its time to pick my last clinical and have no clue what to pick, Inpatient neuro, outpatient neuro, outpatient ortho.

Please if anyone has any advice or words of wisdom I would really appreciate it because Im so confused and feel completely lost.

Don't sweat it too much. I might suggest you pick a setting you haven't had yet. Keep in mind you can take contract jobs or travel jobs out of school so you only commit a little at a time so you can figure out what you want.

 

[ClassOf17Whoop]

Hi everyone!

I am a 3rd year DPT student and always envisioned myself going into ortho, I have had 3 clinical rotations thus far (acute, acute with neuro focus, ortho/sports outpatient) I just finished the ortho outpatient clinical and was soooooo anxious and lacked a lot of confidence in treating these patients and Im now doubting myself in the ortho world. I enjoyed my neuro clinical but prefer the outpatient setting and im now considering to try to look into outpatient neuro or potentially inpatient neuro as a future. I keep finding myself going back and forth and honestly am completely conflicted. I don't want to write off ortho because I did enjoy the style of treatments and I like the manual aspect. I just felt like I had no clue what I was doing and that anxiety was extremely unsettling.

Its time to pick my last clinical and have no clue what to pick, Inpatient neuro, outpatient neuro, outpatient ortho.

Please if anyone has any advice or words of wisdom I would really appreciate it because Im so confused and feel completely lost.

Hey, I actually wrote an article that hasn't been published yet that is literally tackling your exact question...would you like me to send you the file to help with the anxiety/peace of mind? This other one might help a little bit too, but it's less on-the-nose as the yet unpublished one: 4 Reasons to Choose Diverse or Niche Clinical Rotations

 

[ya1]

So you said you prefer outpatient setting, then choose an outpatient setting for the next clinical. Since you have not had experience in outpatient neuro yet, pick outpatient neuro. Then you will be able to compare it with outpatient ortho since you already had that experience and decide if you want to work in neuro or ortho. If you end up liking them equally, you may want to choose the setting that just pays more or where you can practice both ortho and neuro, or the setting where you feel more confident.
Now, if outpatient ortho turns out to be your favorite, it is ok that you have have very little knowledge of what to do with those patients and most importantly how to make them feel better. PT school does not prepare you for that actually. I believe you have to go through lots of continuing education hands-on classes to become a confident professional in that setting unless you want to work in a clinic that puts e-stim and cold/hot packs on everyone and give people exercises with very little hands-on care. Those continuing education classes are price (although your clinic may pay for them). The good thing is that half of your ortho patients will get better just if you educate them on basic stuff that you learned in PT school and add some exercises, stretching, ect to it (like if your muscles hurts and it is an overuse injury, just take a break and take it easy).

 

[LostLlama]

Besides all of the great advice above, what helped me decide was my own personality. I joke a lot. It is important to me to have a good time and have fun with my patients and enjoy their successes with them. If I can't, I feel stifled. Soooooo, besides loving manual therapy and op ortho for its required skill-set from a professional standpoint, the pt population themselves are more akin to what I like to work with. Hopefully I wrote that in a way that makes sense. GL