There’s a tension that I feel needs to be discussed in the world of the new grad physical therapist. It’s the tension between clinical excellence and raw practicality.

Let me explain:

In physical therapy school a few things happen: 1. You are exposed to various ways of thought and various levels of expertise, 2. You incur a silly amount of debt. The exposure to different ideas and philosophies in PT are usually presented by people that are clinically impressive, whether they are a CI, guest lecturer, or a professor. If you are like me, when you see these people talk or treat you want to be like them, or better. One example, is a CI I had that was 15 years out of school had his ScD, and COMT, which took him a collective 9 years to acquire/accomplish. He is insanely skillful in the diagnosis and treatment and I want to be like him, or better. But I have debt that his generation didn’t. And here lays the tension. In order to get the formal training that he had I would have to pay an additional $10k and take a minimum of 9 weeks off of paid work to get there. This is not out of the ordinary for advanced clinical degrees and certification.

The tension is that for most new grads they are not making nearly enough money (compared to the debt they just incurred) to drop that much cash and take time off work to increase their clinical skills and not make any more money. I think that this is a huge problem that will really hinder our profession. It is borderline martyrdom to pursue residency/ fellowship after incurring $150,000 of debt just (I use this carefully, because technically you aren’t making more to have advanced certs…paid the same) to advance your clinical skill.

Do you fill this tension DPT Student or New Grad? Let’s chat. Is clinical advancement worth it? Let’s stop avoiding this conversation and let’s have it.