8 Topics You Should Research Before Accepting the Contract
Before you agree to work at a contract location there are some things you should research beforehand, to make sure you enjoy your time outside of work. You don’t want to actually live the phrase “I can do anything for 13 weeks”, because it gets tough if you aren’t enjoying your life outside of work.
1. Housing Availability & Cost
Having a comfortable housing situation is important! It doesn’t matter what type of housing you prefer (room, entire unit, hotel, etc) You want to know the location of the job and how many housing options are available in the area. There are so many rural travel therapy jobs and many of these small towns don’t have a short term rental market. You don’t want to accept a job, just to cancel a week later due to lack of housing.
If there isn’t any housing in the immediate area or if the housing is too expensive, are you willing to commute further for this job? Some people have no issues driving an hour one way as a commute, which can give you more housing options. If you prefer to commute shorter distances, but there are very few housing options available, you might want to consider a different contract location.
It’s also good to look up actual commute times for different times of day to determine traffic conditions in the area.
Housing options include:
Local real estate agents,
Facebook groups
Asking the contract location hiring manager or clinic director if they have any leads
2. Safety
It is unlikely most travelers are willing to take a job or live in an area with high crime while on contract. Aside from doing a search online and digging into chat threads about an area, you can also look at these free resources to give you a better overview of an area’s crime rates/types and quality of life:
Spot Crime: a quick look at crime activity in an area
FBI Crime Data Explorer: all the charts, all the data, about crime in many cities/states
AreaVibes: good overview of amenities, parks, crime, housing, etc of an area
Facebook Groups: active FB groups for the goings on of a location is a good sign there are people involved in the community which, in our experience, means increased safety
Instagram: search for your location and see what people in the area are posting about or if there are local organizations that have pages for the community. Again, in our experience, this is a good sign
Local Government Websites: check out the tourism websites for a city (hopefully they have one) and then search separately for the legitimacy of all their “attractions”. Each city is going to try to put in a good face for visitors, but the general public will give you true insight.
AreaVibes.com snapshot of contract location safety and amenities
3. Climate
We are consistently amazed at the variations in weather across the US. Once, while in Utah in the fall, we decided early on to take a trip to Yellowstone in November. Turns out everything is shut down and covered in snow in November in Yellowstone and if we wanted to visit, we’d need to use snowmobiles to go everywhere.
We’ve yet to visit Yellowstone.
I think we’ve paid a bit more attention to climate and weather since that location and it is one of the main things we check in on before accepting a contract. We also have better clothing to prepare for the possibility of being in a cold region, be sure you make preparations for that too.
Resources for checking climate and weather of a location:
Weather Spark: “Climate reports by month, day, even hour.”
Weather Channel or AccuWeather: general 1-7 day forecasts of local weather. These both have apps too!
National Weather Service: info on current conditions and past conditions, safety with different types of weather - lots of info
Road Conditions Apps/Websites: good for snowy/icy regions to check highway cameras for driving conditions, these apps are usually free
WeatherSpark.com snapshot of contract historical climate throughout the year
4. Proximity to Attractions
If you’re choosing a certain region for a contract, you have an idea of why you want to visit. Maybe you want to visit every national park or you like a city with a good brewery scene…or you’re like one couple trying to visit every Texas Roadhouse in the country.
However you want to spend your thirteen weeks, map out which city you might stay in and the distances to all the things you want to visit. This will help you make a better decision for contract location.
For example, you might want to take a contract in Chicago, but after you look up and map out all the attractions, they all seem to be north of Chicago. Then you may want to take a contract in northern Chicago or possibly even southern Wisconsin and then visit Chicago one weekend.
Also look up public transit for the area you are going, specifically in a city. You may be able to get around without having a car.
5. Fitness Activities
Many travel therapists live some kind of active lifestyle and this is very important to us, because we encourage this to our patients as physical therapists. Whether you’re a gym rat or pickleball pro, it’s nice to be able to engage a little with the community in the sport or fitness you enjoy. One of the first things we do when we are interested in a location is search for gyms and jiu jitsu in the area. If a city has very few options or if the options are poor, we are likely to look at other contracts first.
Here are a few ideas for searching fitness opportunities:
Gyms/Fitness Center/Martial Arts: sometimes the gym is the place to go for pick up games of pickleball, volleyball, basketball, etc; read reviews for quality
All Trails app: Shows how many public trails there are in the area for walking, hiking and trail running.
Local Facebook Groups: show local events or local clubs will post in them
Local Running Clubs: often it is free to join the group runs
6. CEU Opportunities
This is more important if you are coming up on renewal and have a ‘live hours’ requirement for your license or if one city is known for a specific course you’ve been wanting to take. By looking up the courses ahead of time you can see if your contract dates will overlap and you can ask for those days off to be put into your contract, rather than asking for them off after you’ve already started working.
You can always use Medbridge for all online CEUs, they have self paced courses and live webinars. If you follow this link to our referral code, we get a couple months for free and you get over $100 off the annual subscription. Medbridge is good for PT, OT and SLP CEUs.
We’ve used Medbridge for two years for online or live webinar CEUs. Click photo to sign up and save over $100!
7. Food Scene
If you enjoy trying different foods, going to coffee shops on the weekends or having good pizza available, you’ll want to look up what your possible area has to offer because there are some serious food deserts out there.
Will told me to put that he needs to be near a Panda Express above all else…but one of our contracts was 2 hours from the nearest panda and he survived.
It’s also good to know if your town has a grocery store or if you are ok with driving 30+ minutes to get groceries.
8. Time for License Processing
Some licenses can take months to obtain and if you are thinking of taking a contract in a new state, you should research their contract requirements and possible timeframe for processing. States known to take a long time to progress licenses: Washington, Hawaii, California, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Illinois.
Don’t only consider what the state website says, look up what people are saying in forums about that state’s licensing process. Often the requirements for out-of-state applicants are more in depth and take longer to complete.
If your home state is a member of the PT Compact, getting a new license in a compact state will be a breeze, just go to the PT compact website and apply for the license.
Those are all the main items to look for when considering a new contract location, but of course there will be things specific to you. What do you look for?