I work in home health and have noticed a trend that’s gotten worse recently at least for me of MDs pitting in orders for extension of PT for patients I’m ready to discharge. I find it very disrespectful first of all, why would someone in another profession who isn’t even seeing the patient in there home think they know how another professional who has actually working with the patient should perform there treatments?
Also these orders are typically vague like please extend and 4-8 weeks but that doesn’t manufacture skilled need, they aren’t saying I believe this specific patient oriented goal hasn’t been addressed yet and could it please be addressed prior to discharge, so if they are near there goals what’s then expected? To manufacture a skilled need based on new goals we just need to come up with on the fly? “Patient will be able to perform somersaults and run a 5k prior to PT discharge”. Doctors and there god complex. Anyways that’s my rant for today

She does her PT.

My wife has been a PT for 13 years, specializing in Pelvic Floor the last 9, making in the $48/hr range. We have bounced around a bit but we currently are in suburbs outside of Boston MA, and trying not to dox myself too badly she is currently working for a smaller clinic, and theyre having staffing issues (who isnt from the sound of it?).

They seem to just expect my wife to now work multiple sites to cover their staffing losses, after giving a minimal raise this last year and quoting her "poor" productivity (78%ish?) as a factor.

My wife does not do marketing here aside from a couple small community outreach events, she treats who is on her schedule, is constantly on the front office to try to backfill cancels... to me as a non PT this feels like a "them" issue, not on my wife. Compounding it, my wife is beginning to burn out taking notes home every day to do unpaid since she cant exactly do notes while doing internal work.

But she also doesnt want to leave. She loves her current coworkers and her manager has her back as best as she can anyways, she is upfront about the corporate BS and constantly advocates for my wife.

Is the grass greener? I feel like from cursory searches online she could almost certainly jump to a hospital nearby at 56+/hr with like 30 days PTO+10 holidays instead of the 16+6holidays she currently gets... but im also not a PT and maybe I simply dont know what the downsides are. My wife dismissed the listing out of hand as likely being a documentation hellscape and im just here like "but you're already doing at least 6 hours of extra notes a week?"

'm a PT in Central Europe, working for 5 years now. For past 2 years I've been having my battle with burnout. Lately I find myself losing my empathy, becoming more jaded and slowly losing my patience. Yesterday I just lost it, when a lady, who complained about everything (table not being comfortable for her, temperature too low, patients talking too loud etc), told me during treatment that I need to be better, that she demands from me doing a massage, because she doesn't like my another methods. I just told her this is not a spa and if temperature is too low all the time for her, we can warm up by doing exercises. My goodness, what a mess it created. She filed a complained about me that I am such a bad therapist.

Later on, I got a patient with referral from the doctor about hip problems. I asked him about the hip and he told me this is not a hip. Hip is only in the groin area. I opened his x ray and showed him where is the hip, and he was getting mad and told me that I don't even know anatomy. I lost it again.

I'm not having any patience left. After the work I find myself being less even with my GF at home. I start to dread going to work. I loved learning about physical therapy, but now it becomes such a burden for me. Tried changing jobs, settings and it's still the same. Going on a vacation is not enough.

People that see me after some time say I look like I lost my spark. I sometimes feel like I aged so much in last 2 years.

PTs who faced similar problems, is there something that helped you? Any tips would be nice.

For those of you who have done the pivot from patient facing to non patient facing what jobs do you have? How long was the process to pivot?

I’m a PTA for 10+ years at an outpatient facility. I took the last 2 years off to be a mom which has been great but I’m looking to slowly get back into the field.
I found a great opportunity for prn at an inpatient rehab facility that’s brand new.
How hard is the transition going from outpatient to inpatient? Is it completely different? I’ve been doing some research on protocols and rules that apply.
It’s starting to make me nervous though!

I did a search and the general advice for patients I've seen on here is if you can wear it to a gym, you can wear it to PT, but I'm overthinking it a bit.

I'm a female patient who's curvier on the bottom in PT for a sports-related knee injury. ROM is fine so most of my appointment is focused on strengthening all the stabilizers before i return to sport (so not much manual manipulation by the PT). My primary PT is female if that affects your judgement.

For my initial eval I wore leggings because I knew the PT would have to touch me, for my second appointment I wore sweatpants and at both appointments I got HOT as soon as I started moving around. I usually wear shorts to the gym but the only reason I'm hesitating is because of any lying down exercises on the table. The office I go to is a large room with multiple patients and pts in it at a time.

I don't own any long shorts, only short shorts. I'm more worried about the PTs comfort and general decorum than my mental comfort. Also to be clear short shorts here means fully covered butt cheeks but that's about it, my thighs tend to make the shorts roll up a bit.

Am I overthinking wearing shorts? Or should I just deal with feeling warm in the leggings?

Im a PTA and I have a very futile ortho patient who gets upset easily. She’s ready for DC next week and to move on to OP but can’t afford it, so squeezing all she can from HH although it doesn’t benefit her. (She doesn’t know DC is next week)

Originally she agreed to 9am appointment this morning and suddenly changed her mind after remembering the exterminator was coming over. After offering 9:30 to adjust for the bug guy, she got more upset at me and requested this afternoon. I was unable to accommodate her this afternoon (nor wanted to after she was rude), so I offered her tomorrow morning at 9:30. No response yet, I’m being ignored.

I’d rather see her at 9:30 tomorrow morning so I can finish my Friday early and begin my trip I have planned.

She hasn’t responded in 3 hours. What can I say to confirm her for the morning so I don’t waste my time driving to her house and having her potentially ignore me?

I am a PT and is looking into pivoting to consulting gig.
Opening a senior care placement agency.
Any PT who are doing the consulting? I will like to pick your brain on how to get started.

Has anyone ever participated with one of the groups like (rehabfix) on instagram who essentially tried to sell you their own marketing pathway to doing cash based online physical therapy services? Ironically, it just feels like they are trying to sell you to then move forward and sell to random people on the Internet but they always portray it as making 20 and $30,000 per month… anyone ever actually tried it?

Hello
I'm starting my specialty in spine physiotherapy

What kind of certificates, courses, degrees, lectures, or anything you advise me to enroll to improve my practice in this area?

I have enrolled in Schroth ISST method but I want more to look into.

Ok this may be a dumb question, but I am newer to the field of PT so figured I would ask here. Is it possible to travel in your own area? I live in a smaller area, but we have quite a few local PT clinics (and IP settings) that are always looking for travelers. I would like to check out different local settings and clinics, as opposed to job hopping every few years. However, I've heard you typically are only allowed to sign up for contracts X number of miles away from your mailing address... Is that true? Or can you be a local traveler? Thank you!

I am a PT and is looking into pivoting to consulting gig.
Opening a senior care placement agency.
Any PT who are doing the consulting? I will like to pick your brain on how to get started.

My apologies in advance but I have a “beef” with some CODA and I am at a loss as to how to navigate around a few who are passive aggressive, bossy, trying to assign me tasks or direct me.

I have been wondering this for a while now about OT assistants that I work with.

First of all, some of them come walking up to me and say “thanks a lot! You already tired them out now they refused ME!” I used to apologize or play dumb now I push back which then makes enemies and resentment at work. I find this level of complaining very disruptive and counter productive. Like it’s all my fault this or that patient is this low effort and sometimes trying to split therapists or manipulate you out of utterly not giving a f about therapy.

I have also asked them: why aren’t you focused on functional self care goals? They look like they just rolled out of bed. You’re doing gait training and advancing people from wheel chair to ambulation with FWW or a 4WW.

I mean, am I wrong for standing up for myself and getting picked on? What would YOU say to some angry CODA?

Isn’t this sort of out of their scope?

Then you also have a manager trying to do weekly rehab meetings asking me “why did they walk 200’ but you chart only 40’?” Because thats what they did with me! Maybe they took pain meds earlier before the coda, idk. that’s really great that they walked 200 feet with CODA at six in the morning. But at 10:30 they only walked 40.

I also noticed that the CODA I work with get into work very early compared (2 hours) to me so they get the patient going but time after time are not helping them groom, clean up, shave, brush their hair, brush their teeth. “I don’t do that” they say when asked. They have the patient looking very disheveled. I at least try to make the patient brush their hair so they look presentable in public and not like they haven’t bathed in a week.

I often get attempted refusals that “no no I already did PT earlier with that girl who came in.” (that’s the CODA they are talking about ) But the coda doesn’t even document how far they ambulated, what level of assist, what device used.

Another very annoying trait I am at my wits end with CODA is this “leading me” bs. They will drag a patient to the gym then work them out then begin interrogating me in front of the patient.

Often times I am now very disrupted by this and look this person up then say “ i’m very sorry, but you are not on my schedule today. You are assigned to a different Physical Therapist and I don’t know why I’m being interrogated like this.”

it’s like the CODA is trying to “move things along, fast?”

I really don’t get it and I don’t operate this way. I don’t need anyone gathering up patients for me. I don’t need anyone telling me “you need to see this person. You need to do this or you need to do that. CODA is not in charge of a PTA and now, I push back every single time.

I’ve actually yelled really loudly. “Look, man stop trying to direct me. Stop trying to direct me stop trying to tell me what to do. Stop talking to me like this in front of the patient. I’m sick of hearing it. They’re not even assigned to me today! You don’t know what you’re even talking about. you’re having people do exercise exercises that are not appropriate then trying to get me to walk a patient back to their room as my “turn” for doing their therapy. And then you’re trying to tell me how to run my own discipline when you don’t know what you are talking about I don’t know why you do this.”

After that loud and direct confrontation in front of a gym of at least five patients while I was working with a different one on a set of stairs while being distracted by “do you have this person?” I finally blew up.

I was concentrating on working with just one person on a set of stairs that was very shaky when I was start getting interrogated like that and I really do not appreciate that! Its been day after day of “do you have her?! Do you have him?!” And I know with this CODA is doing. They want me to take the patient from them and walk them back to the room so they don’t have to waste their time returning the person back to the room. Basically giving me what scraps are left. That’s not really skilled therapy, now is it?

I just came here to ask objectively as possible. If anyone else reading this struggles with this type of behavior?

I’ve even seen CODA try to approach my supervising PT’s and direct them and tell them what THEY NEED to do! Honestly, I feel like some of them are a bunch of hacks that don’t even know what they are talking about !

I really wonder why they don’t focus on people eating, brushing teeth, brushing hair, shaving, standing at the mirror. Going on and off the commode. You could actually have an easy time if you just stuck with the patient getting from the bed to the bathroom and getting dressed.

I don’t know and I just ignore the CODA from now on.

It could be also that they’re just passive aggressive cause they don’t like the politics of this nursing home and there’s a lot of workplace stress. And unreasonable “productivity” requirements.

At another job, I’ve actually had one CODA who was so incompetent all she could do was follow me around like a lost puppy. We were basically co-treating all day long, but not billing it that way.

I really don’t think that we need to have a competition between the two disciplines but it feels that way. I have incorporated my defense mechanism and tactics now to physically separate myself and ignore the CODA.

Ps, i really hate COtreating if you’re into playing “tennis” with a patient. that’s yet another gripe I have is that I don’t think they seem to understand that these patients have a cognitive issue and so they bombarded them with way too much information and then they pause and point to me and expect me to perform and “say my end” when infact you as a coda already are basically doing everything, saying everything, i am offering mostly physical support with stand/ transfer to a wheelchair.

My PT has agreed with me on this when we spoke privately and I vented to her about this. I just don’t know what’s the plan / tactic moving forward.

This post was not meant to bash on all OT / CODA I’ve worked with some very wonderful ones. Thanks for reading.

Any thoughts ?