Before even graduating from PT school, I was warned about the high turnover rates within our field. Couple this fact with thousands of millennials entering the workforce, and we don’t seem to stand a chance. A colleague of mine, let’s call him Spartacus, is starting his third job since graduating from PT school a year and a half ago. The first thought that came into my mind was “DUDE…think of your resume. Are companies going to want to hire you given your lack of loyalty to one clinic?” I did not say this out loud, but I was curious on his mindset. The convo went a little like this:
Me: “It seems like you’re leaving a pretty good situation. Aren’t you tired of starting your patient network over every time you start a new job?”
Spartacus: “Not really because I market myself to physicians. They get to know the quality of my work, and their referrals follow me wherever I go.”
This brought on some reflection on my end. Last year, I worked for a big hospital system during my orthopedic residency year. From this experience, new opportunities presented themselves that were too hard to pass up. I am grateful for the friends that I made, but moving an hour across town may as well be moving to a different state. My would-be return customers were as good as gone as most of them would choose convenience of location or the reputation of the hospital instead of traveling an hour to see me again. I understand this situation 100% but can’t help but wonder if there was any way to change this norm.
Branding
Spartacus switched jobs within the same city, so he was afforded the luxury of benefiting from the same referral sources. I was not so lucky. Most of us work for a hospital system or a large corporation. We are their employees meaning that we work really hard to improve the reputation of these companies, in turn the rich get richer (in more ways than one). Let me just say that this is not a bad thing. These companies provide us with a full caseload and excellent benefits. The travesty lies in that patient loyalty is to a building as opposed to a clinician.
How do we combat this? We get better at branding ourselves. There is a big percentage of us that don’t care about brand and only work for a paycheck. In my experience, since you are reading this blog post, you probably don’t belong to that group. You are already one step ahead of thousands of PTs in wanting to improve your own personal brand. Household PT names like Kelly Starrett, Mike Reinold, and Karen Litzy didn’t happen overnight. They worked really hard at creating a brand and that is why they are now nationally known and people pay for their opinions and thoughts. Create your own website, put it on your business card, and put it on your email sig to make sure that even if you change jobs, move states, move countries, your patients are following YOU and not that logo on your polo.
Social Media
The easiest, most obvious, and most crucial step is harnessing the powers of social media. Many of you will just be life-long lurkers and that’s okay! The internet can be a cruel, cruel place. There are many elitist keyboard warriors that want to impose their superiority by demonstrating how great at reading articles they are. To that I say: WHO CARES? Not everyone is up to date on every evidence on every subject matter. There are many other PTs out there that want to help and advance us as a profession. If your post gets bashed, then learn from that experience. You are brilliant and you will do better next time.
There are many amazing unsung PTs out there. They have brilliant thoughts, but don’t use any outlets to share them. If a thought goes unheard or undocumented, it will just disappear into nothingness. That is why I am advocating that you should start your own website. Don’t be afraid to get your thoughts out there. You are one idea away from a million, nay, billion dollars. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? (Realistically get fired if you post something dumb. Don’t be dumb)
Start early. Start now. Groups such as The Prehab Guys and EducatedPT have put out great content for novice and expert clinicians alike. Would you believe that they got their branding started before they even graduated from PT school?! It doesn’t have to be a website; it can be a Facebook page, Twitter, Instagram, Livejournal, whatever. Don’t use Google + though. Honestly who uses Google +? (I’m just kidding Google. Please don’t decimate me). Share your amazing thoughts to the world. If you could help or inspire even one person then it would be well worth it.