All I know is that Northwestern's PT school is 95% female. If you're single, go for it ;)

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The money is getting tighter for PT/Chiro in the managed care health world. It seems that people need only to be kept alive, not necessarily functional...

DPT might be a good profession. Especially in places with direct access. Otherwise you're taking direction from MD's who may or may not know much about therapy...

Hours and pay would both be OK-good, but not very good-great. Job security... hard to tell due to managed care. It seems that the managed care industry will be changing a lot in the coming years. What it's changing to... I wish I knew...

Having said that, I'm not a P.T. so maybe you can get better info than I have.

Lehmkuhler

Lance bumped this.

Currently the minimum education requirement is a Masters in Physical Therapy. Many programs are now converting to a clinical Doctorate in Physical Therapy (DPT), still an entry-level degree, just requires a little extra time in school/clinical internship. So if you already have a bachelors degree you're looking at an extra 3-3 1/2 years of school. That is also provided you already have all the pre-requisites and also some observational/volunteer experience in PT.

I can't speak too much about pay and those types of things as I'm in the Navy, so my pay is dictated by my rank and time in service. I think depending on the state you're looking at $50K and up starting out. Salary potential is all over the board. I have a friend who is getting out of the Navy and taking a position as assistant clinic director and will be making upper $70K and if he takes the director position can push toward $90K, but keep in mind he will be working his friggin ass off for that 90K. Other places you can cash in are areas like worker's comp, but that is a major pain in the ass field with a high burn-out ratio, but the money is pretty good.

As Lehmkuhler said, the best places are those states which allow direct acces to physical therapy. Meaning the patient does not have to be referred by a physician, they can go directly to the therapist. Some of those states, such as Washington, have limited the therapists scope of practice in order to swing the direct access. The big restriction being joint manipulation. This has been an ongoing turf war between PT and Chiro.

I like my field, of course, I deal with a pretty specific patient population. For me it's pretty much exclusive orthopedic/sports PT. I don't have to deal with the headaches of insurance, getting paid for my services and all those other headaches, but then again I have headaches that civilians never dreamed of, so it's pretty much even-steven.

PM me if you have more specific questions.

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Dan Hollingsworth

Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul." - Douglas MacArthur

Not 100% sure for the PT's but I'll guess there in a similiar situation to us chiros with increased competition and the pie being cut into smaller pieces. That's what they tell me any ways. In Canada both chiros and PT is being delisted in some provinces from the government health plans. In the US it's managed health care that is making the payments smaller. The actual number of practitionors has increased considerably and market penetration has not kept pace.

There are still people who are making good livings but it's more of a hustle than it was in the easy money days of the 1980's or 90's. I have a much smaller office than 15 yrs ago. Fortunately my overhead is also proportionally smaller.

I'm seriously considering giving up an engineering position in Corporate America to go back to physical therapy school for various reasons. I meet with an advisor from the PT school at Texas State in 2 weeks.

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