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Making $100,000 per year has long been a marker of success and something that is strived for in society. This is no different for physical therapists.

With tuition costs continually increasing, especially for graduate level programs, student loan debt becomes more of an issue for new grad physical therapists with each passing year. We communicate with thousands of PT students and new grad PTs every year, and student loans are a major point of anxiety for almost all of them. These days, it’s rare to talk to a new grad PT who has less than $100,000 in student loan debt, with the average seeming to be in the $150,000-$200,000 range currently. With that amount of debt, it’s no wonder that the desire to make at least $100,000 per year is higher than ever in this cohort. A high salary realistically offers the only chance of being able to pay off that amount of student debt.

When I graduated from physical therapy school in 2015, I had just over $92,000 in student loans (and my wife and fellow PT, Whitney, had over $140,000). Initially, we had no idea how to approach the situation. The student loan forgiveness options were still very new to me, and I didn’t know if they would be a good fit. I just knew that I needed to earn a lot of money to be able to achieve a positive net worth as quickly as possible.

Here are three options that I considered as a new grad physical therapist that I knew would allow me to earn at least $100,000 per year.

Starting a Cash Pay Outpatient Clinic

As a new graduate from PT school, I was confident in my clinical skills. I spent a lot of time reading research and taking advanced courses, along with my normal classroom education and clinical internships, which put me in a position to feel comfortable treating and communicating with patients. I wanted to put those skills to use in the outpatient setting, but after looking at what outpatient clinics were paying in my area, I just couldn’t go the traditional route. The thought of trying to pay off $92,000 of student loans on a $65,000/year salary was terrifying to me, especially knowing that many of the therapists in those positions were working 45 hours per week or more. This led me to start researching creating my own cash pay physical therapy clinic.

With a cash pay clinic, it would be possible to see less patients and make more money. Who wouldn’t want that, right? At the time though, I had no experience with starting or running a business, and the idea was intimidating. I also hadn’t seen any other new grads who had tried something like this, much less any that had done it successfully, with gave me pause.

Ultimately, I decided not to go this route, but over the past nine years since I graduated, there are a lot more resources available online that make the process less daunting to start your own cash pay PT clinic. There are also many new grad PTs starting and successfully running cash pay clinics making $100,000 per year or more that you can find on social media for encouragement. For any new grad who feels confident with their clinical skills and wants to work in the outpatient setting, starting your own cash pay practice is a clear, although not simple, path to earning $100,000 per year or more.

Working PRN Home Health

I had no experience with home health when I graduated from PT school, and in hindsight this was a mistake. In school I thought that I was sure I wanted to always be an outpatient physical therapist, so I never really considered trying to get one of my clinicals in the home health setting. When I graduated though, I quickly realized that working in home health would pay much better than outpatient, and that I should have given myself a chance to learn more about this setting while in school.

Depending on your state, there are some full time, permanent home health positions paying over $100,000 per year that are willing to assist and train new graduates. The need for physical therapists in the home health setting is very high, so there are often lots of options with great pay.

For home health, I think the biggest opportunity to earn the most money is in putting together multiple PRN positions to create your own full time job. Home health PRN positions will usually pay a flat rate per visit that varies based on the type of visit (start of care, evaluation, treatment, reassessment, or discharge), and the PRN rates are usually higher than what’s offered to the full time staff. The rates for these visits depend on the area and the need, but it’s not uncommon to be able to do five treatments per day and make $400-$500/day. Substitute in a couple evaluations or a start of care, and you can earn even more. Picking up 2-3 PRN home health jobs in your area and working full time hours can be an easy way to earn over $100,000/year as a new grad physical therapist.

Taking Travel Therapy Contracts

Last but not least is the decision that I ultimately made coming out of PT school, which is to take travel physical therapy contracts. A big reason that I chose Travel PT was to make as much money as possible as a new grad to put myself in a good financial position, but there were other things that drew me to it as well. I’d never lived more than an hour away from my hometown, and I had done little exploring more than a state or two away. Being able to try out different areas of the country to see if there was somewhere else that would be a better place for me to settle down long term was very enticing. Also getting to try out different settings to break up the monotony sounded better than being locked into the same clinic for multiple years.

In my first year as a travel therapist, I made almost $100,000 in TAKE HOME pay (after taxes)! That would be the equivalent of earning over $130,000/year (gross pay) in a salaried permanent position. If you’re unfamiliar with how travel therapy pay works, this article explains it in depth. This was way more than I had expected to make my first year out of school. The higher income allowed me to save $100,000 in my first year and a half after graduation, enough to pay off my student loans completely had I chosen to go that route (however I decided to take advantage of income driven repayment options and focus on my investments instead)! Currently, Travel PT pay rates are even higher than when I graduated in 2015, so it’s possible to make significantly more than I did my first year, especially with some leniency on location and/or setting.

Travel therapy is, without a doubt, the way to make the most money as a new grad physical therapist with the least amount of hassle. With that being said, it isn’t right for every new grad. You need to be confident in your evaluation and treatment skills, be a relatively quick learner, and be comfortable moving from place to place in order to succeed.

Which Will You Choose?

There are multiple ways to earn more than $100,000 per year as a new grad physical therapist but these are three of the best ways that don’t require working lots of extra hours. The right choice for you will ultimately depend on your own personal situation and circumstances. As a new grad, it’s important to make a decision that is a good fit and will allow you to grow both professionally and personally. No matter what decision you make, be sure to go in well informed and knowing what to expect to improve your odds of success.

If you choose to pursue travel therapy, we have a free Travel Therapy 101 series that will get you headed on the right track! We can also help get you connected with great Travel Therapy Recruiters who will work well with you as a new grad.

Written by Jared Casazza, PT, DPT – Jared has been a traveling physical therapist since 2015. He has become an expert in the field of travel healthcare through his experience, research, and networking over nearly a decade.

A common question we get is whether or not you’re able to receive mentorship as a travel therapist. This most often comes from new grad therapists or students considering travel therapy right out of school. Occasionally, this question also comes from an experienced therapist who wants to take a travel therapy contract in a brand new setting, but who is fearful he/she won’t be able to succeed without some guidance.

As with just about all things therapy related, the answer is “it depends.” It depends on the particular travel assignment that you choose as well as on what you mean by mentorship, as we’ve found that this can often mean different things to different managers and therapists.

Choosing the Right Travel Assignment for Mentorship

Every job as a travel therapist can be completely different, so if mentorship is important to you, then this is something you’ll have to prioritize when searching for the right travel therapy assignment. You’ll work alongside your travel therapy recruiter to identify facilities that may offer mentorship. Then, you’ll need to ask questions during your phone interview with the facility to determine what type, if any, mentorship is available.

Whitney and I found out the hard way during our very first travel therapy assignments that not all of them will be a supportive environment with mentorship for new grads.

Our Experience with New Grad Travel Therapy Mentorship

Whitney and I both started travel physical therapy right away as new grads in 2015. When we started, we both had about the same level of clinical skills and the same level of knowledge about travel therapy. We started working travel PT jobs as our very first jobs as clinicians, and we took jobs less than 30 minutes from each other. Based on this, you might guess that our experiences as new grad travelers were pretty similar. That was not the case at all. Whitney had a very difficult first travel assignment with a lot of hardship throughout the 13 weeks, whereas mine was wonderful. The interesting thing about this was that before we started the jobs, we both thought that her job would be great and that I would struggle at mine.

Much of this is because we were naïve new travel therapists that didn’t know how important the facility interview is, and therefore we didn’t ask the right questions. By, essentially, luck of the draw, she got a travel contract that wasn’t supportive or helpful at all, whereas mine had a lot of support.

At her contract, after a 30 minute orientation on the first day, she was expected to jump right into to seeing a full day of patients at the large retirement community, which included several different buildings for skilled nursing, long term care, assisted living, and independent living. The facility was new to her, the patients were new to her, and she was unfamiliar with the documentation system, yet the regional manager still expected her to achieve 90% productivity in her first week. That’s completely unreasonable for a new grad, or really for anyone starting their first week in a new place. To make matters worse, she was told there would be another PT on staff there to help her and answer questions, but it turned out that she was actually filling in for the PT who was out on medical leave, so she was on her own.

On the other hand, my contract which was at a small rural hospital, knew that I didn’t have any acute care experience, and the manager was very accommodating and wanted to help me succeed in the new setting. She let me shadow a current PT there for an entire week before I ever saw my first patient. After that, I had a week long ramp up to a full caseload. I wasn’t on my own with a full caseload until the third week, which gave me plenty of time to get aquatinted with the facility and the documentation system. I didn’t have many issues, and if I did, there was always another PT there willing to help and answer my questions.

What Can be Expected on an Average Travel Contract?

Since these first assignments, we’ve learned a lot about what can be expected when starting a new travel job. The truth is that there’s a wide range of what’s normal in terms of travel therapy mentorship. Both of our first jobs were outliers on different ends of the spectrum.

It’s not often that a travel therapist is thrown right into a full caseload on day one like Whitney was, and it’s fairly easy to avoid those jobs with a thorough interview. Being at a facility with unrealistic expectations is no fun, and we advise therapists to avoid those places at all costs. However, it’s also not common to get a full two weeks of orientation, shadowing, and ramp up like I received.

Most travel jobs are somewhere in the middle, and it’s very important to use the phone interview with the facility to determine if the support provided is adequate for your needs as a new travel therapist. Picking the right contract, especially for your first one, is vital in having a good experience as a travel therapist.

Do Travel Therapists Really get Less Mentorship?

To be honest, Whitney and I were both nervous to start out as new grad travel therapists. We’d heard some good things about travel therapy and knew we wanted to see more of the country and to earn more money, but we’d also heard a lot of negative stories from professors and clinical instructors.

There were no resources for travel therapists online back then, so we had no way to know how to choose the right travel companies and recruiters, which was also a big impediment to our success.

We thought about taking a permanent job to get mentorship and experience before traveling, but we were really eager to start exploring. Many permanent jobs in our area advertised mentorship to new grads but were vague as to what that really entailed. As we later found out, in most cases mentorship didn’t really mean much at those jobs.

After a couple weeks at my first travel contract, I talked to many of my PT school classmates to hear how their first jobs were going. They all took permanent jobs, so I was very interested to see how their experience would differ from mine. To my surprise, I actually got more mentorship at my first travel contract than all but one of them did at their permanent jobs. It turned out that most of the clinics that were offering mentorship really just meant that they would get a week ramp up period to a full caseload and have another PT in the facility to answer questions. So much for the “mentorship” I thought I was missing out on as a travel therapist!

As we’ve gotten further into our careers, we’ve learned that our area wasn’t an anomaly. While there are some facilities that offer a dedicated mentorship program, most facilities that advertise mentorship for new grads really just mean an orientation, a ramp up to a full caseload, and another therapist in the facility to ask questions if needed. This is exactly what most new grad travel therapists get as well, so the difference between permanent job and travel job mentorship is often minimal.

Different Types of Mentorship as a Travel Therapist

In addition to the mentorship that travel therapists receive being similar to that of permanent therapists in many cases, I believe that travel therapists receive a different type of mentorship that is more valuable.

In my first two years as a travel therapist, I worked alongside several dozen different therapists at different facilities all over the country. I learned from all of these therapists and got a broad view of the different treatment styles and therapy perspectives out there, which made me a more well rounded clinician. Had I worked at the same permanent job for those two years, I would have had a much more limited perspective.

I also got to learn what I liked and didn’t like about the policies and procedures at the various different facilities. Some were run extremely well, whereas others needed a lot of work. That taught me what I would want to look for in a future permanent position to have the best possible work-life balance.

On top of the above, I also got to thoroughly try out a variety of different settings and learn from each about the various stages of healing and rehab. This gave me a much better view of the patient as a whole and the progression from acute care to outpatient therapy. Trying out different settings also made me realize that although I loved outpatient, a future permanent job in a different setting might be better for me long term. I probably would have never given any other settings a try if I had taken a permanent job right out of school, and I wouldn’t have known what I was missing.

Mentorship and growth as a clinician comes in all shapes and sizes. With all things considered, I think what the average travel therapist receives is more valuable than what the average permanent therapist receives.

Types of Mentorship to Ask About as a Traveler

When it comes time to search for travel therapy jobs, you’ll want to keep in mind the different forms of mentorship you can receive and be sure to ask about these.

As we’ve already discussed, the most common type of mentorship will be another clinician on staff who can help you and whom you can ask questions. Be sure to ask if there will be a clinician of your same discipline on site, full time, at the same facility with you. Also be sure to ask about training/orientation and ramp up time as well, especially if the job is in a setting that is unfamiliar to you.

In addition to on site mentorship, you can also ask your recruiter if there is a mentor available by phone through the travel company. Often they will have clinical staff (sometimes called a clinical liaison) who works for the travel company and can help you in any tricky situations at your travel therapy contract. They may also be able to connect you with a mentor who is an experienced travel therapist who you can talk to and get advice from.

Is Travel Therapy Right for You?

If you’re considering travel therapy and are concerned about the mentorship aspect, I hope that this article sheds some light on what’s available. If you’re relatively confident in your skills as a clinician and pick a good first few contracts based on your phone interviews, then you’ll be in good shape.

On the other hand, if you aren’t confident and feel that you need more in depth help starting your career, then searching out a permanent job with a more structured mentorship program might be a good idea. While most mentorship programs at permanent jobs are minimal, we have seen some over the years that are very thorough and helpful for new grads that need to build skills and confidence.

If you plan to start as a new grad travel therapist like we did, it’s vital to be prepared and as informed as possible about the process to avoid a first contract like Whitney had. A great place to start your learning is our free travel therapy 101 series. It covers the basics and has links to more in depth learning on important topics. If you want a step by step guide to becoming a successful and financially savvy travel therapist, then our course is ideal for you. If you need help getting connected with great recruiters who are very supportive, fill out our recruiter recommendation form so we can get you in touch! Feel free to message us with any questions. Best of luck in your travel therapy journey!

Tag: new grad PT

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