What is Travel Therapy and How to Get Started
Travel therapy is essentially physical therapists, occupational therapists and speech pathologists taking contracts across the US at different hospitals and clinics. We are travel physical therapists so that is our perspective, but much of the process is the same for all three disciplines.
The main reasons someone is interested in travel life are the allure of making more money to pay off those loans (yes this is real!), traveling to places you’ve always wanted to visit or just wanting to not yet be tied to a perm job for X amount of years.
All these things are possible with travel therapy!
To get you started with travel therapy, we’ve outlined and detailed the initial first steps:
Get a Recruiter/Company
Pick a Location
Pick a Job and Complete the Interview
Check Housing Availability
Fill out All Compliance Requirements
Travel to New Job!
1. GET A RECRUITER/COMPANY
This may seem daunting, to move every 13 weeks (typical contract length) and start a new job, but after you get the process down, the subsequent contracts are a breeze to set up. You set up contracts by working with a recruiter at a company that contracts jobs with different facilities throughout the US.
Your recruiter is very important, even more important than the company, because they are your point of contact and they are the people who get things done for you. You want to pick a recruiter who is honest, communicates with you often, and does their best to get things done quickly for you.
If none of this is making sense right now, we completely get it! It becomes more clear as you get going with the process!
2. PICK A LOCATION
After you’ve finally landed on a recruiter and company, you will need to figure out where you want to go. With 50 states to choose from, the choices can be endless, but you can always go with one in the state where you live, where you likely got your first license.
Duplicating expenses is the main way travelers are able to make more money. More on this in another post, but essentially you cannot pick a travel contract in the location of your main home address and to be safe from audits - not within at least 50 miles of it.
If you are a resident of a PT Compact state, then you can easily get a new state license through the compact as soon as you have your home state license. To find out if your state is part of the PT Compact click here.
3. PICK A JOB AND COMPLETE THE INTERVIEW
Now that you’ve nailed down the location, you need to pick out some jobs in that state/area. Know that often, the more rural the location, the higher the pay.
It's harder to get people to Plainville, KS than Miami, FL.
You can choose the job based on location, setting or pay - typically you will sacrifice one to get the others.
Your recruiter will submit all your info to the company and they will decide if they want to interview you. Once you get the interview set up, you want to be sure to take notes on the job and have your own set of questions to ask during the interview.
We will go into all the questions in another post, but you need to ask them to determine if this job is a PT mill, if you’ll be thrown to the wolves day one or if it’s actually a great job with good support.
We would suggest interviewing with 2-3 jobs each contract cycle to get better at interviewing for jobs and to check a few jobs against one another.
4. CHECK HOUSING AVAILABILITY
You need a place to live. Check Airbnb, Furnished Finder, Facebook marketplace, etc to determine if there are even short term rentals available in this area for a price you can afford.
We were once looking at a rural location with not a lot of options aside from the $6K/month gigantic house. We had to get creative with our housing search to be able to accept this job.
There will be a period of time between you interviewing and the job stating they want to hire you - this is the time you use to lockdown housing and then agree to take the contract.
If it is a location that has plenty of rentals listed nearby, you don’t need to worry about this as much but it is still important.
There is always the option of RV life during travel therapy - if you like RVs maybe this is for you.
5. FILL OUT ALL COMPLIANCE DOCUMENTS
Once you sign on with a company and take a job, you will have to submit records of all your vaccines, CPR, licenses, etc. You will have various learning modules to complete on a yearly basis and each time you begin a new contract.
All of these things take time and a little organization to gather and complete, so don’t go on a trip as soon as you sign a contract unless you have all of this done.
Compliance documents are the most tedious thing about travel therapy (aside from CEUs) and they always take more time than they should. You just need to accept it and muddle on through.
6. TRAVEL TO NEW JOB
Depending on how you decide to do travel therapy, you can either get rid of everything except what you carry in your car (like we did) or you can bare down to just a suitcase and leave the rest of your belongings in your tax home.
As you complete more and more contracts and get used to lugging all your belongings with you from contract to contract, you will know what your necessities are, but the first contract will be a learning experience.
By this time, you should have been in contact with your manager at the contract location and know where to park and where to go for your first day.
You’ve gone through the whole process! It is obviously much more detailed than this, but this is the general overview of what it looks like to go from start to finish.
What do you think is the most important step in this process? Comment below!
Reach out if you have any questions about any topics related to travel therapy or need recruiter recommendations! And Follow us on IG and Facebook @elevatedtravelpt .