I recently hit my first big career milestone. Late last month was my five year anniversary as a working PT. Honestly it’s hard to believe it’s been five years. “Where did the time go?” I thought to myself. Five years feels like an awkward stage to be in, at least for me. I definitely don’t feel like a new grad anymore, but I also don’t feel like a vet yet. I guess because I truly am neither.
I’ve shared a previous blog post about why I chose to become a PT in the first place. In honor of it being PT month, my milestone, and me getting that PTO bump at work, I’m sharing my five year PT journey with you all.
Neuro Nerd to . . . Ortho Jock. . .Maybe?
Okay so you’re really going get like a 5 years plus because to understand my first five years, I do have to back up to the PT school days just a bit.
In PT school I honest to god thought I’d end up working in neuro rehab. I was a self proclaimed neuro nerd. My clinicals were definitely neuro-heavy. I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska which is actually home to one of the top neuro rehab hospitals in the country and it was my dream to do a clinical or maybe even work there some day.
Well after an application process, I did get my clinical and I did like it! It was a great experience and I learned SO much. It was a top-notch clinical site. Well… then cue an outpatient ortho rotation and I liked that too! . . . Like a lot. Way more than I thought I would. By the end of my clinical rotations it’s safe to say I was thoroughly confused about what I wanted to do with my life.
Change in Plans
Fast forward a bit. My boyfriend (now husband) and I both passed our boards and we are ready to go. I mean literally go. Early in our 3rd year we decided we’d do travel PT together after graduation.
Neither of us felt married to a certain setting or city. At the time we basically only felt married to each other. The reality of paying off our loans was setting in as well. So we figured let’s go have an adventure and pay our loans off while doing it. There was one problem though. . . COVID.
The COVID-19 pandemic had essentially killed the travel PT market. It was hard to find even just one travel assignment let alone two in the same area that were willing to take a new grad. We essentially watched all our hard work and preparation including researching the ins and outs of travel, looking at different companies, planning when and where to we needed to take boards, and forming relationships with recruiters go to complete shit.
Our plan for the last year seemed to spontaneously combust before our eyes. Heartbreakingly, begrudgingly . . . and bitterly, our gut feelings and our bank accounts convinced us we needed a change of plans.
LTC
The perm job search was better, but not great. The pickings were slim and so were the salaries on the offers. I had several leads and some offers, but mostly at facilities and clinics covered in red flags – high turnover, high productivity standards, and stacked patient caseloads.
Luckily, one of my good friends from PT school had just started at a hospital working in LTC and they were looking for another PT to help with the caseload. She’d done a rotation there and could vouch for the people and the facility.
She managed to convince me to put in an application which turned into an interview which turned into a job offer. LTC wasn’t exactly where I’d imagined starting my PT career, but hey the salary was decent, the benefits were excellent, the people seemed nice, and I’d be getting to run the PT on the LTC unit with one of my good friends. Thanks to COVID they weren’t allowing in-person interviews. My first day of work was the first day I walked into the facility.
LTC was not originally what I would have chosen for myself as my first job. You know what they say though – you can’t always get what you want, but sometimes, you get what you need. LTC turned out to be the best thing for me.
As new grads who in other times would have likely picked outpatient jobs, my friend and I wanted to push the envelope with our long term care residents. We wanted to get away from just the seated and supine mat routines. Thankfully for us we had two experienced OTs beside us in LTC and two managers who encouraged that creativity. It didn’t dawn on me till later how wild it was that our PT director handed over all of LTC to two new grads in the middle of a pandemic. I don’t know if she just had a good feeling about us or was just desperate. I like to think the first one, but I know it was the second. Hopefully it was really a little of both.
The year and a half I spent in long term care made me a better therapist now than if I had just started directly in outpatient PT. I really learned how to be creative and efficient with my treatments, how to roll with the punches, and how to work patients at an appropriate intensity to get results.
It did so much for my confidence as far as what I could handle and what I was capable of even though I was a new therapist. The patients and people I worked with fostered an environment where I developed and learned so much everyday. All the foundation I built in LTC made me mature as a therapist much quicker than if I hadn’t had that year and a half. I attribute a lot of my success now to that time. I took a lot of the lessons from LTC and applied them to the next step in my career when it came along.
After a little over a year in LTC, my dear friend and work wife received her dream job offer and decided she’d be leaving. It made me think about what I wanted my next step to be. What was my dream job? I wasn’t totally sure, but when my managers offered me the opportunity to make a switch to outpatient PT, I decided to take it.
My former work wife and I look back on that first year in LTC fondly. She’s a Swiftie. Kristin, if you’re reading this I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you. Both her and myself ended our LTC chapter and entered a new era.
Transition to Outpatient
I did wonder if I could move from the chaotic wild west of LTC to the structured marathon days of outpatient. Turns out I could. Turns out I even thrived in it. Once I got over the initial shock of my patients coming to me vs me tracking them down in their room or the dining room or the fact the vast majority of my caseload could move independently, my outpatient flow came back pretty quick.
I was also quickly reminded how much I didn’t know. Most of my experience and continuing education up to that point centered around older adults. Now I was seeing anyone from around 12 years old up to 96 years old. It didn’t take long until I was taking more orthopedic continuing education. I also became one of the first few OP PTs to get dry needling certified.
Those first two years in outpatient was a lot of me seeking learning opportunities either formally or informally. I’m also lucky to be surrounded by a lot of really good PTs to watch and learn from or who are willing to teach when asked. Where I work the outpatient PTs all see everything but many of them have their little specialities. We have PTs who are able to treat complex neuro, vestibular, lymphedema, wound care, pelvic health, and even amputee patients.
Fast forward to now where I’ve spent the last few years honing my outpatient skills. I’ve definitely come a long way since my first day as a long term care therapist. I’ve been a self proclaimed generalist for a while now, but in the last year or so I’ve started to ask myself what I want my speciality to be. Or what the dream job would be. To be honest sometimes I’m not totally sure about either of those, but I definitely have a better idea than I used to.
I definitely thrive with orthopedic patients versus other niches. I’ve tried to tune into which patients seem to bring out the best PT version of me. I particularly enjoy working with women who are active and want to stay that way, or who have a strong desire to be more active. I also really enjoy my athletes. I’m now thinking about getting my OCS next year. Has anyone gotten theirs or taken the OCS exam recently? I love to know your thoughts or get any advice.
That’s my five year recap. I hope you found some parallels maybe with your own journey. Did anyone else end school not knowing what setting you wanted to work in? Or end up wanting to work in a completely different setting than you thought you would? Where’s my fellow COVID grads at? Did COVID mess up your grad plan too? Anyone make a setting change sometime in their career? Where did you start and what did you switch to? Anyone get their OCS or other orthopedic certification they feel has been helpful?
Share in the comments section. We can always learn something from each others stories. Happy PT Month! I hope you somehow felt appreciated at some point this month for the work you do. If you need to get caught up on posts head over the blog page. Hit subscribe below and follow @the_pt_page on Instagram so you can stay up to date on all things PT.
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