In physical therapy is there are a multitude of realms you can enter when deciding where you want to work. When I went to physical therapy school I thought I wanted to be in outpatient orthopedics. This is your typical physical therapy that most people picture in their head when they think of PT. By the end of my 6 year doctoral education I did not know where I wanted to end up, but I knew I wanted it to be very far from outpatient ortho. (Ironically, I do that now, but we aren’t there yet).
As I said before, when the opportunity arose to try homecare, I had no choice but to agree. Go into peoples houses? No thank you.
I think it took less than a week to discover that I LOVE homecare. As it turned out, I would eventually get over the scary and gross houses (however, that took much longer than a week).
Like I said, often times I was the only person the patient was going to see all day, and sometimes all week. The patients became my friends and I figured out how to make therapy less of a daunting task for them. To this day, I am still in touch with a few of my patients back in the states; I’ve become a part of their family.
What are the other benefits?
1. You get to make your own schedule!!
– I learned very quickly I am not a person who likes to clock in and out for work.
2. You can go to the bank, post office, grocery shopping, doctors office throughout the day and not need to take time off.
-Who knew going to the post office would be so difficult during work days?
3. For someone that is really good at time management and planning, this is THE job.
4. The more visits you complete, the more you get paid
– Isn’t this what we all want? Reward for how hard we work. In homecare that’s exactly how it goes. Jobs that have a ceiling for amount of pay are found to be unrewarding and eventually less satisfying.
5. It is a really good job to have as your second job (as I will get into later…more than one job is key in paying off your debt faster/earlier)
-You can do really early morning visits, lunch visits, evening visits, weekend visits. Anytime you aren’t at your fulltime job is a good time for homecare.
6. Plan on having kids? Homecare is the way to go.
-I do not have kids yet, but one day I will. It will allow me the flexibility required to be present in their lives.
Alright, now that we’ve covered that! By 2013 I had a good job and good money, seems like I am on the right track to paying off these loans…or am I?