{Beach walkway in Monterey, California // January 2020}
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What is Travel Therapy?
Travel therapy is a subset of regular therapy where the physical therapists (PTs), occupational therapists (OTs), speech-language pathologists (SLPs), or respiratory therapists (RTs) take travel contracts and go to an area for a specified amount of time with the purpose of filling a short-term need, whether due to the facility having a lot of patients (high census), someone going on medical/maternity leave, or some other reason like the company just hasn't hired a full-time person yet.
Travel contracts are usually 13 weeks, but can be extended if both the therapist/facility are in agreement OR be shortened if the facility/company hires a full-time person or the census goes down. Contracts are a little unpredictable.
Why do therapists choose to do travel therapy instead of getting a full-time job?
For one, the pay is usually better. I'll go into that at some other point because that breakdown in and of itself is relatively long. For another, the constant change can be a good thing. Yes, there's less stability and predictability, but you get to work with new people, learn new things, stay out of the facility drama (usually... we've worked with travelers in the past while I was working full-time who were... just wow. They brought the drama with them for sure).
The travel aspect is a big draw as well. The fact that you're on the move and can go to new places every three months is pretty cool. Three months is a long enough time that you can explore the area and get to know it better than if you were just vacationing there, but not so long that you settle in and/or get bored. Plus, you've got a job while you're there, so you're bringing in an income while you adventure.
It helps that under normal circumstances (aka not in the middle of a global pandemic), travel positions are relatively plentiful and the interview process is short and sweet. For the most part, positions are offered the same day as the phone interview if they like you, so there's no long, drawn out, multiple-interviews-with-multiple-people, we'll-let-you-know-after-two-weeks type deal.
While you don't get PTO usually if you're a travel therapist, you CAN choose how long your breaks are between contracts, so you can schedule your vacations then for however long you want/need. So you can be like, "I'm done with this contract in November... I'm going to take an overseas, European holiday adventure for three weeks and then come back to start my new contract in a different state in January."
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Obviously there are downsides as well. I feel like I could write a post about that, but considering I've yet to actually start my first contract, all the downsides would be more theoretical/"from what I've heard" than actually based in my own personal experience.
Thus, I'll hold off on creating that post for a while until I've been around the block a little longer.
If you have any questions or are interested in a specific aspect of travel therapy, let me know and I'll see what I can do to talk about it/clarify it for you. Or if you want to know more about other therapy/medical related stuff, I plan on writing up something about those things, too.
Every now and then, I'm like, "goodness, who's going to listen to me? I'm just... me. How much do I know?" And then I'll get into a conversation with someone or a patient/new therapist will ask a question and I'm like, "heyyy, I know more than I thought I did about this stuff," so I thought I'd share it here for greater reach.
Might as well use my voice for good, yeah? Or at least for education and awareness. (:
While you don't get PTO usually if you're a travel therapist, you CAN choose how long your breaks are between contracts, so you can schedule your vacations then for however long you want/need. So you can be like, "I'm done with this contract in November... I'm going to take an overseas, European holiday adventure for three weeks and then come back to start my new contract in a different state in January."
--
Obviously there are downsides as well. I feel like I could write a post about that, but considering I've yet to actually start my first contract, all the downsides would be more theoretical/"from what I've heard" than actually based in my own personal experience.
Thus, I'll hold off on creating that post for a while until I've been around the block a little longer.
If you have any questions or are interested in a specific aspect of travel therapy, let me know and I'll see what I can do to talk about it/clarify it for you. Or if you want to know more about other therapy/medical related stuff, I plan on writing up something about those things, too.
Every now and then, I'm like, "goodness, who's going to listen to me? I'm just... me. How much do I know?" And then I'll get into a conversation with someone or a patient/new therapist will ask a question and I'm like, "heyyy, I know more than I thought I did about this stuff," so I thought I'd share it here for greater reach.
Might as well use my voice for good, yeah? Or at least for education and awareness. (:
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