Jenna:  Phil there's a lot of new grad PTs out there right now. So give me if you can think back, give me a big win you remember from early on in your career and give me a big learning item that's from the beginning of your career.

Phil:  Wow! That might take a minute to think about. I'll tell you a story on my first patient, though. I bring back my first patient. I literally call back my first patient as a new grad, and he walks up and he's like "So how long have you been doing this?" And I'm like, let's see here. It took you about 10 seconds to walk from the chair to here, so that's about how long. But I played it off as, "Well, if you consider all the training and things like that, it's been about three years, but it's my first day on today's job."
But gosh, big win?

Jenna:  And not necessarily like you changed a life, the first one, but where you either felt, okay, this is right.

Phil:  I think I need to ask you this question.

Jenna: I'm sorry. I don't know...

PTs leave a lot of money on the table.  It is a mix between not being taught what to do and not knowing exactly how to go about the negotiation process.  We weigh in on how to go about a negotiation so that you can get what you're worth and still build the relationship.

Wondering how your salary compares? Use our free salary calculator

Dear PT Students,

It took me 26 minutes to fill out my March Madness bracket  (Illinois is going to win in case you were wondering).  

It is always hard to predict.  Anything can happen in March and you can look at what a team did during the season, but that doesn’t always translate to success in the tournament.  Over the next few weeks we will see upsets, surprising outcomes, and some expected ones.

Number one seeds can fall in the first round and eight seeds in the final four.  I think this is the perfect analogy for PT school.  Once you graduate, once you prove you know enough everyone has a shot at success.  Some will see it immediately, some will see it down the road, but don’t think how well you did in PT school predicts it at all.

4.0 students may struggle (and that’s okay) and 3.0s may thrive immediately.  Once you graduate, don’t worry about what it took to get there. ...

About week ago I was standing looking out at Niagara Falls with some of my favorite people.  I wasn’t on vacation, I was working. And I wasn’t just working. I had traveled with colleagues to Buffalo to use the Y-Balance Test (one of my "professional babies") for testing the players at the NHL Combine.  This wasn’t my typical Thursday, but its not completely unusual either. However, if you asked me what I was doing 15 years ago on a Wednesday afternoon, the backdrop would have appeared a lot different than the 8th wonder of the natural world and professional sports.

15  years ago I was in the clinic full time.  I was working a typical schedule and imagining a day with more athletes, more flexibility, and honestly something different. I remember thinking maybe PT was no longer for me. I still remember the level of frustration on one particular day when I was doing passive ROM on what felt like the 20th rotator cuff repair of the day.

...