I had another conversation with Jimmy McKay of PT Pintcast. We discussed things to do in Denver around APTA’s CSM conference expecting up to 18,000 attendees this year. We also talked about my history of travel PT, new endeavors into concierge PT, and my full time gig as a slope-side therapist in Aspen, CO.
For other Hobohealth appearances on Podcasts and recorded presentations on travel PT: https://hobohealth.com/wordpress/media-appearances/
A couple weeks ago I found myself sitting at a small breakfast table with 2 past Presidents of the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) and some current ACA board members. For anyone who knows me well, this is a very unexpected place to find me – I am acutely aware of and involved in the many legal battles that have taken place between Chiros and PTs over the years. Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on the whole experience meeting with Chiropractors, I’d like to share it.
With the scene set, I must pause for a second and write a little about my writing process. At the beginning of a typical post, I have an idea and I start writing. Sometimes I don’t know where I’ll end up, other times I do, but I never know what the middle of the piece will look like. This time, I know I will end with a message of hope and collaboration between professions that have often been adversaries over a few decades. I only tell you this in order to convince you to read to the end. I can’t imagine I won’t disparage some Chiropractors along the way, it might get ugly – just stick with me, the end is positive.
There’s a local Chiropractor, who as with any other practitioner in a small town, I share some patients. She and I have never really met each other, but we’ve been in the same room enough times that we know who each other are. We share some great friends in common. Because of the people she is friends with, I can’t imagine that she is not a good person – but as a professional…. uhg. Her clients routinely come in believing they have “had Physical Therapy before”. I was shy at first when patients would come in telling me they already had Physical Therapy, but now I plainly reply, “You have not had Physical Therapy. She is a Chiropractor, you have had Chiropractic, not Physical Therapy”.
This single Chiropractor is emblematic of my relationship with the Chiropractic profession over the years.
My introduction to back pain was through an injury I suffered wrestling in high school. I originally went to see a Chiropractor who was the father of a soccer teammate. After my first Chiropractic treatments, I was hooked. Manual Spinal Manipulation feels good… but it didn’t fix what would eventually turn out to be a spondylolysis, a.k.a. decapitated scotty dog, a.k.a. fracture in my L5 spinous process. Chiropractic adjustment felt good, I loved it, but it wasn’t curing my spinal fracture. I eventually would wear a lumbar brace for 9 months, take some less-than-recommended time off sports, and get a short course of Physical Therapy that I hardly remember.
Fast forward several years, and I’m at Northeastern University in a pre-PT program bringing in Chiropractors to talk to our class so we can understand their profession, as well as ours. I was that guy. I was the guy who brought Chiropractors into school so we can all learn from each other and practice in a happy collaborative world of bliss.
Chiropractors ruined my positive attitude about them – there is no one to blame but them. I got involved in APTA in Massachusetts, then the states I lived in as a travel PT, and then nationally. One constant persisted across my experience – Chiropractors suing PTs across the country over pointless turf battles. The lawsuits centered mainly around two topics, PTs performing manipulations and PT Direct Access (without a Physician or Chiropractic referral). These lawsuits were not based on patient safety, they were only based on a perceived threat to Chiropractors’ bottom-line. These lawsuits developed a long, dense history of contention between the two professions that eventually led to last month’s Interprofessional Collaborative Spine Conference (ICSC) to start healing some wounds.
The ICSC brought together PTs, Chiropractors, and Osteopaths to discuss manual spine treatments.
The structure for the conference was essentially this: For two days, panelists presented topics, then opened up to audience questions for further discussion. The presenters and audience were largely leaders in PT and Chiropractic, (and Osteopathy). The questions were engaging and on-point – the presenters were the best-of-the-best in our fields. There was zero contentious discussion that was had. In fact, I found the formal content of the conference pretty underwhelming.
The good news is, there was a lot of time scheduled for social interaction and networking. This is how I found myself having breakfast with Chiropractic’s heavy hitters. The very individuals I have grown accustomed to battling against in state legislation over-and-over again, I was having a polite breakfast with, exchanging stories of insurance interference in our practices, and exchanging business cards. I think I behaved myself, and the conversations were enlightening for me.
The time in between the sessions was invaluable for me. It allowed for open, cordial conversation about a variety of topics. We talked about our education, our practice, our research training, and our common interests. It added to my understanding of the loooong histories that make the Physical Therapists, Chiropractors, and Osteopaths what they are today. Our current-day practices are deeply entrenched in the histories of our professional origins over the last 100 years and long before.
After digesting the conference for a couple weeks, I now more strongly than ever believe that the Physical Therapists have the higher ground on whose practice is more evidence-based. I hope that the Chiros and DO’s walked away saying to themselves, “Whoa, did you hear that content from the PT presenters?” That was definitely my reaction. But, more likely than not, their reaction, like mine, was something reinforcing their own practice beliefs. But, maybe they are onto something too. Chiropractors have a very effective model in making people feel good (if only for a little while). They don’t allow themselves to feel overly limited in doing exactly what the science dictates, they just manipulate and know it makes a lot of people feel good. They do have a point.
I could go on. And on. And on about how I believe PT is more superior in research based practice, that’s our training… but that’s not the point. They clearly have something good going on with the way they practice too. We will not align Physical Therapist and Chiropractic practices for a very long time – our histories are too different.
There was a great common thread of conversation that reflects the impetus for this conference. Research does, indisputably show, that patient interaction with a Physical Therapist, a Chiropractor, or an Osteopath decreases prescription medications, imaging, surgery, and, most importantly, cost. One phrase I heard in conversation at the ICSC that has continued to run through my head is, “A rising tide lifts all ships.” So true. Despite our different individual histories, and our many battles against each other, if we can unite to improve access to manual therapists before surgeons, we will save our patients from pain and from the cost of undue medications, radiographs, and surgeries.
I have learned that everything we think we have different with Chiropractors is justified. But we have one major thing in common – either of our treatments decreases more invasive and expensive alternatives. That is something worth burying the hatchet and uniting over.
I grew up going to Red Sox farm league games often. Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where the AAA Paw Sox played, was a short drive across the Massachusetts border from the house I grew up in. I remember seeing a bunch of major league studs passing through there – including seeing Roger Clemens throw a rehab start. I never went to a true Red Sox game before college, but Red Sox baseball was definitely exposed to me at an early age. I even had a second cousin come through Pawtucket one summer, playing in the farm league for the Mets. I think I was 12 and remember standing by the players’ exit after the game to meet him briefly. I was shocked at how huge all the players were – the great majority over 6 feet and some of them ducking their heads to get through the locker room door. Wally came out and took a picture with me – pretty cool. He played a few years for various teams in the big leagues, I wonder where he is now.
Fast forward a few years, and the Red Sox won their first World series after an 86 year drought. The victory was in 2004 while I was at Northeastern University in Boston – on whose current campus the first World Series was played (won by Boston). Right in front of the old PT building, there’s a statue of Cy Young pitching from the location of the mound in the first World Series. The statue is barely noticeable in a courtyard filled with trees and shrubs. Hardly a tourist destination, but a cool history to know about and feel close to.
By the time of the 2004 World Series, my entire PT class had become entrenched in the Red Sox culture. Exams were delayed during the playoffs, all eyes were on baseball, not books – there was a common understanding that something uncommon was happening.
Through several years of PT school, there were times we’d see players out at the bars. I remember a few classmates who through connections of family members had ended up having Hall of Fame Pedro Martinez and Future Hall of Famer David “Big Papi” Ortiz up to their apartment to hang out one night. Other classmates were working at Fenway Park on the grounds crew as a part-time job. We were in the middle of it when the Sox won in 2004, we all felt like we were a part of it.
The years between 2004 and 2007 blur together. I remember one roadtrip with friends out to Colorado where we stopped in Kansas City to watch the Royals play. On a later roadtrip out to West Coast clinical affiliations with some friends, we caught the Sox playing in Anaheim against the Angels. That trip included some of the guys from the earlier roadtrip, but added a handful of others including my friend Kate, who I would later end up marrying.
By the next time the Red Sox won in 2007, Kate and I were travelers watching in an empty Uno’s Pizzaria in Colorado Springs during game 4 against the Colorado Rockies. We quietly hid our glee slipping out of the restaurant and then skipping down the street in a town that had lost the Wold Series that night. Later on, still as travelers, we lived in an apartment on a little peninsula just north of Boston when the Red Sox won again in 2013 after the Boston Marathon Bombing. It was nice to be back close to home when they won again, and when they won with so much emotion attached to it. On the day of the championship parade, we had staked out an early-morning table at McGreevey’s Tavern on the sidewalk where the parade passed by. We got a front row seat to the parade and somehow ended up mingling with some of the survivors of the bombing who were first made famous through their trauma, but later through their advocacy for other survivors. Many hours later in the day, we had been at the bar long enough, that our table was inside a red velvet rope and in very close proximity to Red Sox stud Mike Napoli. He hopped behind the bar, poured a couple drinks and marched around like the hero he was that night – the next day, the news published pictures of him parading shirtless through Boston, which I only accept partial responsibility for.
In between all these pinnacles, there were many lows where the Sox did not make the playoffs, or lost brutally to a division rival. There were also a number of road trips between Colorado and New England on alternating travel assignments. Every road trip was a chance to catch a random road game and in one instance to swing by the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. If you have the slightest interest in baseball and are ever within a few hours’ drive of Cooperstown, GO! In 2012, when living in Anchorage, AK, we went to a farm league game up there, and heard a couple stories about the time an outfielder was running away from an aggressive moose… I’ve seen a lot of baseball on the road.
I don’t think my connection with baseball and the Red Sox truly reached its peak until the summer of 2015 when Kate and I were living in a camper on Martha’s Vineyard (Mahtha’s Vineyahd). We had no TV in our camper, and the wifi was iffy enough that streaming anything was pretty much out of the question. So, we turned to Red Sox radio for almost every one of the games that summer. One of the worst and best things about baseball is that the regular season is 162 games – that takes up most of the nights between April and September. That summer is when baseball became a true daily habit for Kate and I. Red Sox Baseball on the radio every night. If I recall correctly, the Red Sox season didn’t last into the playoffs in October that year, which was probably fine, since we moved indoors to an apartment that same month – and resumed the daily cable habit. But, something from that summer stuck, and most nights April into autumn, we are still watching or listening to the Red Sox.
Interleague play brought the Red Sox out to Colorado where we were able to take our 2 year old daughter to her 2nd Red Sox game. Because of the two separate leagues in baseball, the Sox and Rockies hardly ever play each other. It will likely be another 8 years before they play out here again. Sox won that night, Coors Field was full of Red Sox fans, it was fantastic.
But, the first game we took our daughter to was even more fantastic. Whenever a vacation is coming, I eventually look at the baseball schedule to see if there is a game I’d like to see on the road – well, this one was a no-brainer. We were visiting my parents in Florida, and my parents, Kate, our daughter, and I all went out for an afternoon game when the Red Sox were visiting the Tampa Bay Rays. What was otherwise a rather mundane loss by the lack-luster 2019 Red Sox was turned into an unforgettable afternoon when the guy sitting next to us caught a Tampa Bay homerun. His story is really long, but the short of it is this: He’s a long-time season ticket holder, he was wearing a purple suit, and this is the first home run he has ever caught. It made his year. It made my day.
I was never much of a baseball player. I think I had written it off by 4th grade. Too bad, really. Apparently it’s in my blood. On my Mom’s side, we have Wally who pitched in The Bigs for a while. I also remember my Grandfather telling stories about pitching to Shoeless Joe Jackson while in the Navy. My Dad is a big fan of baseball with a deep knowledge of the game. I didn’t realize his passion for baseball until very recently, you’d think the frequent trips to see Farm League Baseball as a kid would have been a clue a little bit earlier.
As the current World Series works towards a conclusion, I have just a couple days left to celebrate as a fan of the 2018 World Series Champions. Man, what a game. Maybe you think it’s too slow. Maybe 162 regular season games is crazy. I’m just looking forward Spring Training and whatever park I might get to visit next. Play ball!
This is the dirty little secret of travel PT. Everybody knows it, why not say it aloud. Everybody with me now:
…Nor should any other traveling healthcare profession, really. Don’t worry, no employers will take this message to heart like they should – a healthy travel industry will undoubtedly persist beyond this blog.
Why are we allowed the ability to travel all over the country to choice destinations while making more money than the hard working professionals that live and work there year round? We shouldn’t, but many employers are so buried in processes and organizational optimization that they fail to see the easy answer to their staffing issues; A classic case of not seeing the forest through the trees. Pay your permanent employees more and you will need less temporary staffing!
I have to back up just a minute. We couldn’t eliminate the entire industry, some travel assignments are available for exactly the right reasons:
The reason most employers hire travelers is not these good reasons. It is because they believe they can’t find consistent staff in their area. False! Wrong! Misnomer! STOP TELLING YOURSELF THAT!!! The reason you can’t find employees is because your compensation package is sub-par. If you would just pay more, people would rearrange their lives to work for you.
I’d like to present a case of one specific employer I heard about recently – actually a group of a couple dozen employers. These hospitals share market information within a group. All of these hospitals are in the same geographic area. They base their pay off of the “market rate” which is an average pay between all the hospitals they compare rates with. The numbers they are looking at are for full-time PTs. So, a full-time PT gets paid a competitive rate versus the other fulltime PTs in the region. If one facility increases their rate of pay, their increase is averaged against the other employers. The thought behind this model is as need for employees increases, the pay goes up in the market – employees must be paid more to meet staffing needs. I’m not so sure this model works like they think it works.
This example sounds fair-and-good until travel PTs are included in the equation – travelers are not included in the calculation. You have a group of hospitals hiring full-time PTs at one rate, hiring travel PTs through agencies for much, much more money, and then not including that rate into their calculation of pay for full-time employees. Effectively, the market system of comparing with other local employers keeps the pay down – no one actually raises their pay, because they all compare to the “market”. Meanwhile, these hospitals hire expensive temp workers and do not add that cost to the calculation. Infuriating.
This is why travel PTs should not exist. If employers would pay their physical therapists a modest amount more, they would not have to hemorrhage money out to recruiting agencies every month to fill their needs, but they do and the travel PT life is a wonderful opportunity for the therapist that can pull it off.
A few years ago, I was accidentally sent an email containing one single recruiter’s billing for a week. The bill was organized by each facility and contained amounts for each traveler provided. There weren’t that many facilities listed, maybe 15. Most of the bills were for a modest number of travelers – 1 to 3 travelers per facility typically. BUT, one particular facility had over $30,000 of pay for travelers in one week!!! I kid you not. (would I kid about this?) I think I could quickly fix that facility’s staffing issue. PAY YOUR EMPLOYEES MORE!
Now, I am not advocating for the end of travel PT. I must repeat that it is a wonderful opportunity. I certainly took advantage of being able to travel the country while working a professional job and think many others should exploit this opportunity as well. Traveling is so cool. GO TRAVEL! Travel all across this country, work in different settings, with different people, in many different places. But, if all the employers smartened up at once and started paying their full-time employees more, the travel market would instantly shrink to less than half its size.
Don’t worry. The travel industry is going to do just fine, I don’t see any big changes happening any time soon. I can only write this because it will make zero impact on any employer – they will keep marching forward keeping their full-time employee rates at just enough for most people to no quit. Take advantage, travel, and enjoy yourself doing it while making much more money.
….and shhhhh! Don’t tell the employers about what I said.
Social media is full of trash, absolute junk. Physical Therapy’s twittersphere and facebook groups are mostly a flaming pile of garbage. Now, don’t get me wrong. Most of the people running groups on facebook and moderating discussions have pure intentions and deep knowledge – for the most part, they are true experts. It’s everyone else who gets involved that ruins it. Social media has leveled the playing field so that everyone’s opinion counts equally. There is no rating to show that one person may have in depth knowledge and experience while another is just a know-it-all crackpot. Vetting info and figuring out whose advice you can trust is more important now than it has ever been.
There was a particular post on a travel PT Facebook group with a series of completely false answers that led me to write this piece. Someone asked the often-asked question, “How far do I have to travel from my tax home to get a tax-free housing stipend.” Let the wrong answers pour in: “50 miles!” “60 minutes!” “100 miles!” ….people with such confident, concise answers. The correct answer is: “a taxpayer must be on a trip that requires the taxpayer to stop for sleep or a substantial period of rest.”^ …and there you have it, non-specific, open to interpretation, and totally typical of the IRS! That’s not an easy answer, is it? That is not easily repeated, typed into a social media thread, or understood. So, we get repeated, false answers like “50 miles!”
I’m done with the griping part of this blog, let’s get positive. I only share the example of awful information on Facebook pages to illustrate the point that you need to dig a bit deeper to find good resources – there are some fantastic resources out there!
Happy travels out there. Please don’t listen to any ol’ know-nothing on the interwebs when it comes to travel PT… or when it comes to any other topic. You’re better than that, and there are great, easy to find resources out there that have the answers you need.
^Sourced via traveltax.com: Tax Court Small Tax Cases (Archive), Daniel P. and Glenna J. Marple v. Commissioner., U.S. Tax Court, T.C. Summary Opinion 2007-76, (May 21, 2007)
*Some bloggers that I think put out great information:
I’ve had some trouble with delineating the roles in my life lately. I’ve always considered myself to have a variety of different personalities I can tap into – I initially come of as clean-cut, if not preppy, but my music interests lay primarily in heavy metal – very much at odds with my appearance. When on travel assignments, I have often heard I give an initial impression of reserved and quiet – but it doesn’t take long to learn that is far from the truth. For short periods, I have abandoned my clean-cut look for a shaved head and heavy goatee, which has served me well in scaring off tourists in Hawaii and has lead to fun nights blending into the crowd at biker bars in Maine.
I think we all have some multiple personalities within us that can come into conflict at times. I recently have experienced that conflict coming to blows between my personal and professional life… at least internally.
My Congressional Representative and I have very different views of our world. We disagree on most topics. I find him extreme in one direction, he would likely find me extreme in the other. Our district in Colorado, that I live in and he is elected from, is large and divided in its politics. I don’t think it’s moderate, but all the different extremes exist within it. I feel he should vote more moderately as to represent the average of his district, after all, he was re-elected with only 51.5% of the vote in the last election, hardly a landslide.
While my representative and I disagree on many topics, our lives and common opinions seem to be intersecting on one particular topic – the opioid crisis.
I currently serve as the Federal Affairs Liaison for the Academy of Orthopaedic Physical Therapist within APTA. Simply, this means I keep on top of the legislative issues affecting physical therapist and report back to the Orthopaedic Board. It also means I attend the annual Federal Advocacy Forum, put on by APTA, to meet with our Representatives and Senators in order to advocate for the bills and topics that will benefit PTs and our patients.
In the past couple years, APTA has targeted the opioid crisis. Afterall, Physical Therapists are positioned uniquely to help in reducing the amount of pain pills that need to be prescribed. We have extensive skills in decreasing pain (through exercise, manual therapy, and modalities), we are often the alternative to surgery or injection, and we do not prescribe medications. Every study I am aware of shows our ability to decrease the overall cost of a musculoskeletal injury in contrast to surgery or medication. A big part of Federal Advocacy Forum is PTs educating legislators on what it is we do in our daily work and how our skills can best be used to improve the lives of their constituents.
My Representative has championed responses to the Opioid Crisis and done a good job with it. We may not agree on much, but we agree on addressing the problems that have lead to Americans’ dependence on opioid medications to “fix” their pain or feed their addiction.
I have met with my Representative’s staff over the past couple of years, and very briefly with him. It’s an interesting exercise in burying my personal politics and focusing on what the priorities are for the Physical Therapy profession. I have heard other PTs at the Advocacy Forum ask about this conflict – personal politics vs professional role. The answer is always, simply, you put your personal politics aside for this role – but what about all the other days of the year outside of the Forum?
For 3 days per year, at APTA’s Federal Advocacy Forum, I try to be the consummate professional advocating my my profession, my patients, and their causes. However, I only found myself in this role because of my interest in politics and policy. Obviously, I have some deep, deep disagreements with my Representative. How do I reconcile that? I see a scenario where I could end up at a fundraiser for him, funding his re-election through my professional priorities, all-the-while biting my tongue and trying to get everyone I know to vote against him. I’m having a hard time putting this internal conflict to rest.
PT-PAC raises money to contribute to candidates who are supporting PT-friendly legislation. One PT I know, deeply entrenched in these positions and topics, stopped his donations to PT-PAC. He felt his personal politics were so greatly at odds with some of the candidates PT-PAC was supporting, that he could not be involved. I get it – my representative is a personal foe, but a friend of the profession. Where do we draw the line? To what extent do I let my professional roles define me? I often feel strongly about large societal issues and want to act to improve them. But, often, I think I’m just tricking myself into believing I can have an effect – do I completely abandon those large societal topics for the professional priorities that I am actually in a position to affect through face-to-face conversations with my Congressional Representative? Uhg, I think so.
In a different position, I participate in APTA’s House of Delegates as the Delegate for Western Colorado (quite similar to the chunk of geography my Congressman represents). The House of Delegates is a meeting held each year to develop the policies for APTA, and therefor, the profession. Some of the topics are meaty and contentious, while others are snoozers for me. Luckily, there are over 400 Delegates representing every state and specialty area in PT. Someone in that group has a passion an expertise for every topic that is discussed.
I was at a PT conference earlier this year and ended up in a conversation with a longtime PT leader that I respected. We were casually chatting, and with legislative issues and House of Delegates topics on my mind, I asked him a question: “What are the topics we need to be taking on today to make sure Physical Therapy is a thriving profession in the future?” It was like he had been waiting all night for someone to ask him that question…
This aging leader in our profession talked on-and-on about Physical Therapists’ effect on society and our need to speak out on a wide variety of issues external to our profession. That as highly educated professionals, we have a responsibility to drive not only our profession, but also our society, in the right direction to achieve their optimal health and wellbeing.
I don’t know how this guy did it, but he predicted the future. Maybe another 30 years in our professional association will give me the same foresight. The House of Delegates is taking on a large breadth of topics that are societal (political) in nature this year. The topics include Medical Marijuana, vaccinations, naloxone use in PT clinics, and gun violence. You often hear discussion around these topics about whether we should be taking them on at all, or if we need to re-focus on PT-specific topics.
Within my Delegate and advocacy positions, I find a wild contradiction. In my position as a political advocate, I bury my personal beliefs to represent the priorities of APTA. In my Delegate position, I use my personal beliefs to help determine the priorities of APTA. To which extent do I rely on my personal experiences and values, and to what extent do I suppress my personal beliefs to act in a silo as a clinician-leader in my profession?
The most contentious of the House of Delegates motions this year is about gun control. I think it best articulates our involvement (or not) as a profession in social issues, and it illustrates my conflict between personal and professional priorities. The original idea for the motion is quite different from the current version because of collaboration between many PTs from different states and backgrounds. These motions can change and evolve up until the very moment they are passed or defeated. In my opinion, the current (June 1st, 2019) version of this motion is far less political than its original form. It does not advocate for any specific gun control, but would add APTA’s support to performing a CDC study on the health effects of gun violence.
At the outset of writing this blog, I wanted nothing to do with the House of Delegates’ motion concerning gun control, but after writing this out, I want to discuss this topic more. If you are an APTA member, you have access to all of the Delegate discussions leading up to the House. Also, if you are the rare bird who wants to be involved in it all, you can live-stream the house.
As someone who holds positions both in representing the priorities of the profession and determining the priorities of the profession, I’m curious where you think I should draw my line between personal and professional politics. Do I let my personal political beliefs shape the profession? Do I bury those personal beliefs to advocate more effectively for our profession? It all seems very complicated to me.
Links to info on all House of Delegates motions including gun control, House of Delegates motion discussions, and Federal Advocacy Forum. If these kinds of topics interest you, you should probably give to PT-PAC and contact me to get involved in this kind of stuff. Our profession needs more, opinionated clinicians who want to drive the future of PT.
When I was a traveler, everything I owned fit in or on my Honda Accord. Now, just 2 years departed from travel, I have all this stuff. Most of it has a function, the things that don’t definitely have sentimental value. Regardless of it’s use or sentiment, all of this stuff is… here. In my house.
As I get ready to move from my current home to a bigger house with additional free space (which I’m sure I can fill-up quickly), I am reflecting on everything I own and how it came to be this way. I had great joy living in a camper for 5 months on Martha’s Vineyard. I lived out of 2 suitcases in Hawaii for 6 months – multiple times. A 5×5 storage area once contained all my wintertime equipment and toys – now they spill forth from every closet, rack, and corner.
As I lament my minimalistic-demize, I’ll share these tips with you for down-sizing and keeping small as you transition to your next travel assignment. Come on, Marie Kondo, hugging all my belongings? Ain’t nobody got time for that.
This one is easy. If you rent furnished apartments, you won’t need furniture or appliances. This simplifies everything as you move place-to-place. Simple.
Airbnb, Craigslist, and HomeAway make it easy to find furnished housing for the short-term. I always had good success in the local classified papers finding things like inlaw apartments above garages (Skowhegan, Maine for that one). Just hop on the interwebs and find the local paper for wherever you are headed and you should be able to access their classifieds online. There remains this percentage of people who haven’t discovered the ease of online buying and selling – you will find apartments in the local classifieds that aren’t listed anywhere else.
You’ve got this car full of stuff that you’re dragging around the country. Some stuff is seasonal in nature – for me, ski gear^, but 9 months should account enough for the change of seasons and activities. If you haven’t used something in 9 months, you don’t use it enough to justify bringing it from assignment-to-assignment. Ship it home, send it to a friend, or consider establishing a gear cache (below).
There is so much you’ll be tempted to bring that you don’t need. You don’t need a better TV. You don’t need to bring video games with you. Leave the DVDs behind. Eliminate all the stuff you might see as a nice luxury for downtime. Your furnished apartment will have an adequate TV. With subscription services, you can order up whatever you want for entertainment while you are on assignment. Besides, hopefully, you are going somewhere awesome that will keep you out of your home most of the time. Maybe with less in-home distractions, you’ll go on more outdoor adventures and make more friends while on assignment. Games, TV, movies, Facebook – it’s all a giant time-suck that doesn’t enhance your life.
Once you have pared down your belongings to a reasonable amount, you must maintain that small volume. Don’t accumulate! It’s easy to let stuff start showing up and staying – you will regret it the next time you have to move, which may be sooner than you think in the world of travel. Follow the simple “one in, one out” rule – if you bring something in, something must go out!
Need a new shirt? That means one has fallen out of favor in the rotation. If you’re going to buy a new shirt, you have to throw one away. Of course, the more stuff we can keep out of the landfills, the better – always resell or donate. The same goes for anything else you want to buy – want a new book? Then something comparable has to leave. Easy peasy. You’ve been living just fine with what you have. If you get something new, something old must go.
Some stuff you want for “someday,” but you just don’t need it on assignment. Maybe you’ll want it when you’re not traveling anymore and are more “settled”. I have this waist-high gold colored box that I just moved to the new house. I haven’t opened the box in years, but I can’t bring myself to toss it either. The box has old baseball cards, pictures from high school, a class ring… things of that nature.
There’s some stuff you’re going to want to keep, but absolutely can’t travel with. You need somewhere to stash it. Maybe there’s a space at your tax home where stuff can stay, or maybe you need to rent a small storage area. It doesn’t matter where your extra stuff goes, but hopefully it’s cheap in case it stays there for a long time. And, hopefully it’s accessible in case you decide you need something from your storage.
For traveling, you have to lighten your load. Otherwise, transitions between assignments will become overly burdensome. Ditch the stuff you don’t need, travel light, and happy Marie Kondo-ing if you have the spare time.
I believe every avid skier should have at least 5 pairs of skis for a variety of conditions and activities:
This list is meant only as a bare minimum of the skis one should own and is no way meant to limit ski possession. ….perhaps this might explain something about my gradual fall from minimalism…. but what am I going to do? Give away my Powder skis!? Blasphemy.
Last month, at APTA CSM, I got together with Stacy and Melissa, two recruiters from Anders Group to discuss travel PT. The premise of the conversation was getting into some of the “next level” topics that recruiters and travelers never get to discuss together.
At just under 40 minutes long it’s a good listen for your next run, commute, or road trip. Either stream it right now or hit the three dots on the right to download it for later. Happy listening!!!
I’m very happy with the conversation we had and hope all the things we discussed will help you find the assignments you want!
Many thanks to Stacey, Melissa, and Anders Group for taking the time out of a VERY busy conference to chat.
Tennessee and Missouri share their borders with 8 states each, more than any other state in the nation. Both are compact states, and both are actively issuing compact privileges. Each has 6 of their neighbors in the compact, including each other. Tennessee has one advantage over Missouri – Tennessee’s neighbor, Georgia, currently has legislation proposed to adopt the compact later this year. Therefore, I hereby rule, Tennessee is the center of the PT Compact World.
You don’t need me to tell you where the center of the compact is. Just look at the most recent national PT Compact Map – you can easily tell we all revolve around Tennessee. Come on Missouri, “show me” I’m wrong. <— hehe, hope you caught the MO joke in there.
The compact has come a long way in the last year. 23 states have adopted the compact – 9 of those are active, issuing privileges to PTs and PTAs. If you’re in a state that has approved the compact already, but is not yet active, don’t worry. Most likely, if your state has approved the compact but isn’t active yet, they are actively working on making it happen.
The compact is a scripted piece of legislature that states are individually approving into their laws. Each state has to approve the exact compact language. Any changes in the language would void the compact – essentially, it’s an agreement between states to accept licenses from other states – each state’s law has to match. So, if your state has approved the compact, but isn’t active yet, your state board is working to align its requirements with those of the compact.
It’s complicated, I get it if you don’t understand yet. A great example of an existing state compact is drivers’ licenses. Each state has the exact same language in their laws acknowledging every other states’ drivers’ licenses. That is exactly what the PT profession is trying to accomplish – license reciprocity among all states.
What I have heard about the actual compact experience is very positive. The people I have talked to have gone online, paid their fees, and immediately have license reciprocity! If anyone out there has had an experience, good or bad, with using the compact, lease post in the comments. I think it’s important that we start to collect some info on how the compact is doing in the real world.
There are 23 states onboard and another 5 are currently working towards adopting the compact. There is a very realistic scenario that we could have over half of the country on the compact by the end of the year – that is a very big feat in a very short time! As more states sign onto the compact, the states who are not onboard will find themselves being the odd-man out. States without the PT Compact will likely suffer staffing shortages. In a world where we are expecting PT staffing shortages through at least 2030, I can’t imagine why a state wouldn’t want to decrease whatever barriers it can for workers to come work!
That’s all I’ve got on the compact for now. Please do share any positive or negative experiences you have had accessing compact privileges. Ask any questions you might have. I’ll be replying and writing on this topic in the future as things progress forward.
I recently received an email question about setting up your own travel contract without an agency. Here is the question and response.
Traveler:
I was just reading your post on independent contracts. I’m wondering if you were able to negotiate a pay package comparable to what a clinic would pay a staffing company. For my first assignment I found out that the recruiting company took about 37% off the top of what I made. Would you be comfortable sharing how much you were able to get out of independent contracts?
Thanks for you time and help! Really appreciate your website.
HoboHealth:
Great to hear from you again. Glad to hear you are enjoying your travel experience!
I truly only did independent contracts when I couldn’t find an assignment through a recruiter in the area I wanted to go – or when there was only one job available and my wife or I needed a second job. I always had the dream of making crazy-money by offering to work for just a bit less than what a clinic would pay an agency, but it never worked out that way. I made typical travel money on my independent contracts.
Two examples of independent contract pay that I can think of off the top of my head: one private practice was paying me $52 per patient in a typically low paying state, another place paid me $1800 weekly. After taxes, those work out to about typical, if not low, for travel money. So, I never achieved the dream of beating the system and making more money than I would through an agency.
I guess my takeaway is that independent contracts are a good way to find a contract when there’s not one to be had, but it never really worked out for me to make crazy money.
Hope that helps, do let me know if you have other questions.
For more info on making your own independent contracts, check out these resources, along with examples of actual contracts:
