The "other" RPT's

[k.swafford@genie.geis.com]

 >I visited the real world today, and became a new client of an RPT -- a
 >Registered Physical Therapist.  But you're right -- before today, I
 >wouldn't have known.
 >
 >--Jim Harvey

     I'll probably regret this post in the morning...

     A few members of this list know that I have told tales over the
years about the "other RPT's".  I have a new tale to tell.

     Actually, WE must be the "other" RPT's:  I don't know how long
physical therapists have used the RPT designation, but my wife,
Bonnie, has been an RPT for 19 years, and by the way, there are
hundreds of thousands of physical therapists.

     During the time that Bonnie has been a physical therapist, the
demand has grown by leaps and bounds.  Physical therapists have been
in very short supply for years, pushing salaries way up.  It is
definitely a "seller's market" for RPT's.

     My career as a piano technician has thus far been secondary to my
wife's career.  She is the director of a PT department at a large
teaching hospital.  I have been lucky enough to arrange my work
schedules for the past 11 years, if at rather low wages, so that my
kids would not be in day care.  My kids are older now and less in need
of day care, so I have been looking to increase my piano technician
income.  This has proved to be, shall we say, somewhat more difficult
than I had anticipated.

     My outlook wasn't helped much, then, when my wife related to me
the following experience of one of the RPT's she went to school with:

     Karen has 19 years experience as an RPT and has advanced degrees
that would qualify her for management positions, but salaries are so
good for staff physical therapists, she decided long ago to forego the
headaches of being a manager.  She has two elementary-school-aged
sons.  She recently changed jobs in order to arrange her schedule
around her sons' school days.  She told prospective employers that she
could not come to work each day until she had taken her sons to
school, that she would have to be done each day in time to pick her
sons up when school was out, that she would have to be late to work
some days becuase she wanted to work part-time as a PT in the Special
Ed. program at the sons' school, and she couldn't work at all on days
that school wasn't in session, although her sons would go to day care
in the summer.  A hospital accepted her conditions, and she is now
working for them, doing "home health," that is, providing therapy at
the patient's homes, for a salary of, GULP!, $60,000 per year.  This
is in Wichita, Kansas, by the way, not in a coastal city where the
cost-of-living is high.

     I'll hang in there, arranging my work schedule around my kid's
school days, but I haven't really recovered from hearing this tale
about the "other kind" of RPT.  I wish my wife had kept it to herself.




                                             Kent Swafford