♪ Bob and Brad, the two most famous ♪
♪ Physical therapists on the internet. ♪
- All right, hi, folks, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- Could say the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course.
- Speaking of which, should you become a physical therapist?
We're gonna discuss personality fit,
salary, and job availability.
- What really more do you need?
That should help you-- - Make the decision.
- There you go. - By the way,
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- Right.
All right, Bob, this is something that we're experts in.
- Yeah, I would say.
And also we actually get a fair amount of questions on this.
- We do, right.
- And right now I have two neighbor kids
became physical therapists.
Well one's currently in school, and the other one,
and I helped both of them.
- You did? - Yeah, I helped with their--
- With their homework?
- With their paper.
With the initial paper, of why you wanna
be a physical therapist.
I just told them what to say and (laughs)
but I also have a nephew that's going into it now, too.
- Well, you didn't stop him yet, huh? (laughs)
- No, no, I haven't been able to convince him to stop.
- All right well first of all,
if you get more serious about this,
if you are interested in becoming a physical therapist,
and you're not sure, some of these questions are,
first of all, jobs, it's kind of important,
is there some jobs out there?
- My daughter, when she was going to college,
she wanted to become an editor.
I go, "Look right now and see how many jobs there are
"for being an editor." - Yeah.
- In a dying field, basically, to something dead.
And she couldn't find any!
I go, "Well do you wanna find that out now,
"or do you wanna find that out after you get outta school?"
- Right. (laughs)
- So, yeah, there's availability of jobs, aren't there?
- There are.
You may have to relocate if you wanna get something
right after school, but you know,
I don't even think that's,
you may have to wait a little bit,
depending on your location,
but you're gonna get a job, it's there.
- Yeah, I've been in the field for 30 some years now,
and it's almost been a shortage most of the time.
And it doesn't seem to me like a job
that's gonna get replaced by technology.
Does it to you?
- No. - It's too much hands on.
It's not like a radiologist,
which seems like that field is going away
'cause computers are doing a better job.
- And there's such a wide variety, I mean,
you can go anywheres from rehab, outpatient, orthopedic,
geriatric, pediatric, industrial, sports,
did I say sports already?
Yep, oh!
And of course, YouTube,
they have the demand for physical therapists.
- Now I would say, with industrial,
some of that you can actually start your own business even.
- Oh, sure. - We did a little bit of that.
- Right, yep.
Yeah that's one of those things
that is really nice for the entrepreneur.
- And sports, if you wanna look at high end sports,
like working with an NFL team,
a lot of times those are physical therapists
and athletic trainers combined, they have both degrees.
- Yep, see they always have a lot of credentials,
CS, CSO and all those things.
But yeah, so it really does open up
a lot of opportunity out there.
As far as salary, it's good salary.
It's not like you're going into business or engineering.
You're not gonna make that kinda money,
but you're definitely gonna survive,
and you'll do well.
- Yeah, it can range a lot.
Starting can be maybe 50 something a year,
up to, you know, you can make 90 a year,
depending where you are and
if you're gonna be a traveling therapist,
then you're gonna make a lot more.
- And I think that's gonna be the most,
by quite a bit more,
but you have to travel to a different location.
And it may not be the funnest location.
May not be your choice,
it's not like you can go to Hawaii. (laughs)
- So yeah, traveling a lot of times, there'll be areas
where they just don't have therapists at all,
so they'll pay people to come and live there
for like three months.
And my daughter's doing this right now in speech therapy.
- Yeah, it could be three, six months.
They'll oftentimes pay your hotel or your,
wherever you're living, living expenses,
a little stipend for food and a good wage on top of that.
- Well my daughter, she actually, she was at a school,
it was a really bad school, unfortunately,
but they constantly used travelers
because they couldn't find regular therapists.
I mean they went from year to year to year,
I mean you can, some of them worked for five years there
as a traveling therapist.
So they basically lived there.
- And that's gonna be a certain population.
You know, I would've done that when I was in my 20's.
- Oh, sure. - But not now, of course.
- When you have no ties to anything.
It's a great way to see the country
and make some money while you're at it.
- Exactly.
But most importantly, Bob, I think,
do you have the right personality fit
to be a physical therapist?
And I think, we got a list here and I really think,
if you answer yes to all these,
you're a pretty good candidate for a physical therapist.
If there's some that's like, "No, that's not me."
you may not be a good fit.
For example, the first one is you really have to be
sincere desire to help people out.
And not just people you like, it needs to,
all people of all different sizes and shapes.
It can be tough when you're in the clinic
and someone comes in and they're not a nice person,
they don't talk to you nice, they're kinda grumpy,
or whatever it may be,
and you have to sincerely wanna help them.
- If you're in a nursing home, and a lot of times people
they've been beaten down by life and they're dealing
with a lot of medical issues, they're not in the best mood.
And that's where it becomes a challenge, to me,
and you too, where sometimes you start to bring out
that personality by joking around a little bit and--
- Exactly, and it all falls into place,
and then once you get to know the person,
it's like, "wow, this is--"
- "Wow, this is a way different person!"
- Right, exactly.
And this to help people in the, you know,
when you do find, you get to someone and you get 'em going,
and you get rid of their pain, they're moving, they're happy
it's like "Oh!"
That is one of the best feelings in the world.
- It is a good feeling.
Whenever I feel a little bit stressed out,
when I work in the clinic or work with patients,
that all goes away.
It just does, I mean, you're helping someone,
you feel good about yourself,
it's just a way to calm me down.
- And then you have to be able to take some losses
where you get someone that you cannot get them better
and you send them on, or I know just last week,
I had a person I really enjoyed working with, and she died.
And that's gonna happen too. - That's part of it,
in the geriatric field, unfortunately.
- So anyways, that's important.
Next one, you need to be, and this all interrelates,
is you need to be an outgoing person.
If you're an introvert,
you don't care to get out of your circle--
- Brad, by the way, I'm an introvert.
- You are? - Yes, absolutely!
- Oh, Bob, why Bob, why?
- And that shows you, 'cause if you're not an introvert,
you don't understand what an introvert is.
An introvert, when they work with people,
it does take the energy out of 'em,
and their energy comes back when they're alone.
Doesn't mean I don't like to work with people,
I love working with people, but it is harder on me.
It takes more energy for me.
- Well, okay, you can be an introvert if you're like Bob.
(Bob and Brad laugh)
But if you like to work by yourself at a desk--
- Right, and that's a good point,
'cause we had a girl in my physical therapy class,
the first year was all academic
and she was top of the class, four point probably something,
and the second year,
she literally could not work with patients.
And she ended up quitting the program.
And she needed to be in a lab or something like that.
So yeah, if you don't like to work with people,
I think that's what you're saying.
- Right, and a variety of people,
and then be cheerful with them, even if you're not,
you know, you're having a bad day, you gotta fake it.
Or take the energy from your patients
and make it grow, and sometimes it's the other way around.
They're grumpy and you gotta give 'em your energy,
and it becomes a real growthful, a nice situation.
You're trying to make the best out of a tough thing.
- We always don't get our patients to be better,
but I always can make them feel better, in my mind.
You can always accomplish that part of it.
- Yeah and there can be uneasy situations
you gotta get through.
I was telling you just a couple months ago,
I had a patient come in and he was drunk.
He had alcohol on his breath, and he got ornery with me
and he left upset, and I was-- - Upset, too.
- Well I was concerned, he was a big guy,
he was mad at me 'cause he wanted me to do something,
he thought he was gonna get fixed and I couldn't,
it was a real bad situation.
That's an extreme, that's only happened once in 24 years.
- Yeah, so that's amazing isn't it?
- Yeah.
Oh, positive.
You really need to be a positive person,
think positive, be positive,
and let that rub off on your patients.
'Cause there's so much of getting well
for the patient is to feel good and to feel like they have
an opportunity to improve.
I just worked with an ankle person,
and the doctor said, talking surgery.
And I looked at his ankle and I said,
we looked at the range of motion, we did a video on that,
and he left and he said, "I just feel so much better now."
And he says, "I have hope." - Right, and no surgery.
- Yeah, and he says, "I know that there's a possibility
"I can get through this, I just need to do my homework."
and it made all the difference in the world.
- And I'm gonna throw in something else, here, Brad.
For me, it was I love understanding how the body works,
I love the athletics, I loved working out,
to me that's a good personality fit
for being a physical therapist, would you say?
- Yeah, 'cause I didn't get into this until I was 29
when I went back to school, but I didn't even know
what a physical therapist was,
but I was in karate for a number of years,
and I always knew that my back and my body felt better
after I do my stretches and my exercises.
And like you, I've always physical and I appreciated that,
and then I decided I wanna know
why this makes me feel better,
and maybe I can help some other people in the same manner.
- It does seem like, majority of the people in my class,
really liked athletics and liked understanding
how the body worked.
So I think that's, not absolute reason
why you're gonna go through,
but I think it plays a big role.
- At least you need to be intrigued by it and interested.
By the body, how it works, and all the gyrations,
with movement, and why certain movements make you feel good
and other ones, ouch!
Stay away from 'em.
And then last but not least, our school.
You gotta be prepared, and now it's a doctorate program,
so you probably gotta go six to seven years of school.
So save your money.
- Yeah you gotta save your money,
you gotta, to some extent, like school.
I mean, you can't suck it up for that long
unless you like school a little bit.
So I think in the end it's a good lifestyle choice,
a lot of times you're home at night.
I thought it was an easy way to raise a family
as a physical therapist.
- You can help your kids out when they get injured. (laughs)
- Yep that's right.
Help the old cross country team any time.
All right, thanks everybody for watching.
- Good luck, I hope we did something right.
(upbeat tone)