Informational Interview
- 1. Informational Interview Allison Hammett, DPT Interviewer: Kristen White
- 2. What training or education is required for this type of work? “Clinical Doctorate in Physical Therapy”
- 3. What personal qualities or abilities are important to being successful in your occupation? “Outgoing, does well interacting with people, good with multitasking”
- 4. What do you do on a typical day in this position? “Go through exercises with about six- eight patients. Do initial evaluations and progress notes. Do full one hour treatments with each patient.”
- 5. What are the positive and negative aspects of working in this field? “You get to meet people and be active all day. The negative is the paperwork behind the scenes can be overwhelming at times.”
- 6. How many hours do you typically work each week? Do you often work in the evenings or weekends? Can you arrange your own hours? “I usually work 25-30 hours per week. I just started another PRN position in acute at the hospital that I work afternoons. No evenings or weekends. I am usually done by about 4 or 5:00. With PRN, I can arrange my hours how I want them.”
- 7. What is a typical starting salary? Average salary? Other benefits? “Starting salary depends on the state but it is usually around $60,000. The average is around $70,000. If you work full time, you get benefits, but since I am just doing PRN and part time, I do not get benefits.”
- 8. What are some of the rewards of your occupation? “Seeing your patients progress is very rewarding. Doing an evaluation and then seeing them for a tenth visit treatment, you can see so much progress and it is rewarding to know that you had a part in their healing process.”
- 9. Please tell me more about your occupation and its purposes? “Being a PT is knowing everything about the human body and how it works so that you can understand injuries or balance impairments. The more you understand about the body, the easier it is for you to come up with exercises to help promote healthy, healing tissue. It isn’t all about exercise, there is a lot of manual therapy done as well. Manual therapy is putting your hands on the patient to adjust or manipulate tissue to promote healing. The purpose is to be a part in the healing process of a patient’s tissue.”
- 10. What is your job security in this occupation? “We are in high demand. In moving to Greenwood just recently, both my husband and I are PT’s and we found a job immediately and had multiple job offers. It also depends on the setting that you want to go in. Right now, baby boomers are a very significant aspect of our job so many are looking at SNF’s, ALF’s.”
- 11. Is there a demand for people in this occupation? “Yes, we are in high demand. As I mentioned earlier, the baby boomer population especially has caused PT’s to be in very high demand.”
- 12. What are the problems you see working in this field? “Overload of patients with not enough therapists. Sometimes you have to work overtime because there isn’t enough help.”
- 13. How would you evaluate the future of this career field? How do you see jobs in this field changing in the future? What areas do you feel promise the most opportunity? The most growth? “It will stay in high demand for at least the next 15 years. I feel that manual therapy is a huge part of the job and more schools will teach more manual therapy classes. Most opportunity would be in skilled nursing facilities and Assisted living facilities due to the baby boomer generation.”
- 14. What opportunities for advancement are there in this field? How will this job change over the next 5 years? 10 years? “Research is changing how instructors teach. New techniques and new material come out everyday. Documentation will get more strenuous as Medicare has so many rules. Its hard to know what the future holds with insurances as they are all becoming more like Medicare.”
- 15. What special advice would you give someone entering this field? “It’s not easy. School is tough which is good because it prepares you for the real world. Don’t be close-minded as to which branch you want to choose. You might think you want to do Acute, but then when you go on your internships, you may change to outpatient, or neuro, or pediatrics.”
- 16. What, if anything, do you wish you had known before you entered this occupation? “Documentation only becomes more strenuous as insurances need supported information. Once you get used to the documentation, it really is not that bad.”