Over the last decade, the amount of sports physical therapy residency programs has skyrocketed. There are so many great programs now.
Our students ask us all the time if they should do a residency.
Our answer is always, “It depends.” They aren’t for everyone.
Here are our current thoughts on sports PT residencies, who should consider them, and who shouldn’t.
To view more episodes, subscribe, and ask your questions, go to mikereinold.com/askmikereinold.
#AskMikeReinold Episode 356: Update on Sports PT Residencies
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Show Notes
• The Most Important Thing You MUST Do to Accelerate Your Career
Transcript
Gavin Harden:
All right, Heather from Georgia asks, “I’m a physical therapy student that wants to get more involved working with athletes. I know in the past you’ve been a little critical about residencies, and was wondering what your current opinion is. Do you recommend PT students apply for residencies?”
Mike Reinold:
That’s a big loaded question. I like that. But I think we can dig into something deeper. I remember maybe like eight years ago or so, it was a while ago now, it might have even been longer. Our PT students were coming to us and they’re saying, “Hey, what do you think about a residency?” And we were always like, “Well, why do you want to do it?” And they’re like, “Well, my school’s pushing me to do them.” And I remember at the time, we were always like, “Well, is that your rationale?” But man, a lot has changed in the landscape of sports residencies over the last several years. There are dozens of them now, dozens of them. There’s so many residencies that you can do now that this has really changed the landscape for what you can do.
And I know there’s a ton of good reasons why you should do a PT residency, a sports PT residency if you’d like. There’s also still a lot of reasons why you shouldn’t sometimes, but why don’t we hit this a little bit? And Mike, you work with a lot with our students. Most of our students now are asking us these questions. I feel like every cohort of students we have, we have at least a couple of them that are applying to residencies. What’s your take on residencies these days? What are the pros? What are the cons? What do you think?
Mike Scaduto:
Yeah, it’s definitely a topic that we talk with a lot of our PT students about. I think they’re feeling kind of lost and confused as to what their next step is. They definitely want to learn more and I think a lot of where they come from is a place of learning and growth and confusion. They’re kind of nervous from going from their clinical straight into working as a clinician full-time, and they don’t feel like they have the confidence to tackle those early couple of years. Or maybe they have higher aspirations of working in professional sports or collegiate sports and they see that as an opportunity to get their foot in the door.
I would say, at least in my opinion, I think the sports residencies probably work the best for the latter. Those people that kind of have a game plan, they have a goal. And maybe their goal will change over time, but at least in this moment, they have some kind of goal that they’re striving for within the field and they see an opportunity to get their foot in the door either to an organization or to a hospital or to a university. And that residency provides them an opportunity to learn from people within the organization, but also, essentially, however long it is, that’s your job interview and you’re probably more likely to get an offer if you do really well at a residency if that’s a place that you want to work at. So I think that’s probably, I know we talked about this in the past, but that’s probably still my best use case for a residency for a new grad PT student.
Mike Reinold:
And I think the ability to get a residency that helps you achieve those two goals or one of those two goals is far more likely now than it was 10 years ago. There were so many less and there’s people that are like, “Well, if I do this, I can get a job in the NFL.” It’s like, wait, why? Right? Just because you did a sports residency? I mean, unless that gave you exposure to high level football or something like that. And now we have those residencies. Those exist now. So you can actually get a residency that probably puts you into the exact setting that you’re looking for. So I like that, Mike. That’s a good one.
Lisa, what do you think? What’s your advice to your students when they come to you and they say, “Hey, I want to do a residency.” ‘Cause I’m pretty sure, by the way, of everyone at Champion, I’m technically the only one that’s done one. Nobody else has done one. So it’s not like any of us have done it. So Lisa, what do you think?
Lisa Lowe:
Yeah, I mean I feel like usually when students are debating the whole process, my 2 cents to them is usually more along the lines of, “so the purpose of this for you might be,” like you’ve already said, to make those connections. That’ll kind of meet your goals in the long road. Great. But people are looking for more mentorship. And so you’re basically looking at these different residencies trying to find your mentor, and if you’re just going to somewhere because of the name that it is, and then you’re going to be paired with this person who you really don’t match well with and you really don’t feel like you’re going to learn from and you think about the amount of time and effort of residency is if you’re stuck with someone who is not a good teacher for you. Now to me, that’s always my caution… you want to attempt to find your as close to perfect fit as you can, look at a lot of different programs.
If you really want to do it, it’s worth the interviews. It’s worth the time to find that person that you’re actually going to get mentorship out of. Because I feel like, in talking to some students who’ve gone through them that we’ve had previously, I feel like students are more often disappointed in their choice when the mentorship aspect wasn’t a good match. They got the patient experience and they got kind of everything you would get out of your first year of working anyway, but then their disappointment comes from that mentorship.
So to me, that’s always my biggest piece of advice, is just make sure that that part of it is going to be good. ‘Cause otherwise, unless you have aspirations to go to that next level that you need the connections and all of those pieces we already talked about, you could just go get a job and figure it out in that way. But yeah, that’s usually my conversation.
Mike Reinold:
You go get a job, make more money. And more importantly, I think, one thing is the geographical footprint is important if geography is part of what you want out of your career. So if, “I want to work in the NBA and I’ll work anywhere…” Okay, that’s different. But if you’re like, “I want to move back to Boston and work there,” the earlier you can get there and establish your footprint in the geography, I think it would be helpful.
But to your point, Lisa, I’ve talked to many people that have been disappointed with their residencies, so it’s not like these are slam dunk here. I think we always advise, “Don’t just do this because you’re unsure of what to do next, or you’re unsure of if this is the right thing.” That’s not the reason to do a residency. You do a residency because you’re trying to achieve a goal, and I think Mike nailed it right there. They’re trying to accelerate your career and you don’t mind taking a year off to do that, make a little bit less money, that sort of thing. Or you’re trying to get very specific. But Len, what do you think? What’s your current thoughts on residencies? What are you telling our students these days?
Lenny Macrina:
Yeah, I mean, I keep an open mind as usual. I try to stay kind of Switzerland and in the middle. And it’s not for everybody, and some people, that’s their main focus. I don’t like when schools are pushing it that everybody has to do it or you’re going to be somewhat penalized if you don’t, or scared into not doing it. But I think we have friends and people that we know that have created residencies and I would trust sending people to them. And I think because there’s so much more competition now, that the years of making pennies on the dollar to commit yourself to a year with that residency doesn’t really exist much anymore. You’re not taking too much of a financial hit because your loans kick in as soon as you graduate. And so you have that responsibility with lenders, and so you got to keep that in mind too.
But I think it’s a good thing for people, and if it gets them where they want to go, then absolutely go for it. We’ve had a bunch of students that have come and gone, and some are applying and some are done with PT school and done with having that life of having to grind and learn from that aspect and want to just get out and practice, but they’re different. Maybe they’re an athletic trainer or they were a PT aid or PTA and went back to school and have a little bit more experience. I find our PT/ATC that come in or PT students that are ATCs tend to do a little better. They have a year or two of experience in treating athletes and working with patients and communicating and having a little bit more experience and having that on-field, so to speak, or in-the-clinic experience, that I think is an advantage for them.
And I’d be curious to hear Gavin’s point of view because he is an ATC who worked for a couple years and is now in PT school, and I’m curious to hear what his school has had to say for him and what he is potentially going to do after PT school. So I think it’s for not everybody, but I think it’s for a lot of people. And definitely if they want to do it, I am going to push them to do it and help them get into that residency.
Mike Reinold:
Gavin, I mean you are going to apply to residency, so what was your thought process behind why you wanted to?
Gavin Harden:
Yeah, no, good question. First, going back to what Lenny said first, so I worked almost three years as an athletic trainer before PT school, and I think it really helped once we got into the clinical education, the Pell patient courses, anatomy, things like that. Answering a lot of questions for other students, and I felt really comfortable working with patients. But on the other side, other students who went maybe even more clinical science background, exercise science, had a little bit more knowledge in things like biomechanics that I didn’t really get in athletic training school. So there’s advantages, disadvantages to both. Pros and cons.
And then as far as what they’re pushing in my school, it’s really driven on… It depends on what your end goal is. So don’t just go to a residency because you think that will make you a better clinician and that’s the only way. Don’t do the residency because you’re afraid you don’t know enough. Because so much learning is going to happen in your first few years as a clinician. But going back to what Mike Scaduto said, if you have a clear vision and goal, and you want to accelerate your development, it can be a great way to do that.
Mike Reinold:
Awesome. Well said, Gavin. I like that. Yeah, I think our biggest recommendation now is don’t just do this ’cause you don’t know what to do with yourself necessarily. The two biggest advantages right now for me is the acceleration of the career, and I don’t have a number on this, but let’s say that one year of time on your residency is the equivalent of two to three years’ time on your own, maybe. So it helps get you a little bit more comfortable, more reps, more mentorship, more extra learning. But I think to me it’s not even that. I think that’s a benefit of it. I think the reason why you do a sports PT residency too, because we’re not talking about residencies, we’re talking about a sports PT residency, is because you’re trying to get to that setting that you want to get to, right? That, I think to me, is the biggest advantage of these now, is there’s so many to choose from now that you can do one that works with collegiate football or you can do one that works in Major League Baseball.
You actually have these opportunities now that didn’t exist when these first were getting started, and they were just extensions of learning, versus actually putting you in a position to get experience in the field you want to get to. So I think to me, that’s the most exciting part of them now is if I’m hiring somebody to be a PT within baseball, and I’m just going to combine or compare a new grad versus somebody that just finished with a residency and has some experience with another team, that person’s probably going to be higher on the list. So it’s almost like what these have done is they’ve created yearly opportunities for jobs. Normally like, “Oh, we need a PT for college football.” Well, you just hire one and that person’s in that job for 5 to 10 years. There’s no openings. But now with the residency, you’re almost saying, “Hey, we’re going to get a new person every year.”
So what it is, every year you have a new opportunity to get into that program and to potentially get experience there. I think it’s just opened a lot of doors for people. So I think that’s where they’ve excelled. I think there’s other points we could talk about with residencies, but I think those are the two main ones right now.
So again, right, if it’s the right situation for you, the right mentorship, but more importantly, probably the right opportunity, I always say this and I’ll never back off the statement, this needs to help you get to your goal. That’s why you should do it, because it helps you get to where you want to be. That’s my number one criteria. I think that’s huge.
So anyway, Heather, good luck with that. Hopefully, you get into a good sports residency and that’s something that you end up doing. Maybe we’ll have Gavin back on the podcast in a year and a half and see how his residency went. I think that’d be interesting too. But appreciate that.
If you have more questions, head to mikereinold.com, click on that podcast link, and you can fill out the form to keep asking away. And please subscribe, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and we’ll see you on the next episode. Thank you.
