Informational Interview

1. Informational Interview
Allison Hammett, DPT
Interviewer: Kristen White

2. What training or education is required
for this type of work?
 “Clinical Doctorate in Physical Therapy”

3. What personal qualities or abilities are
important to being successful in your
occupation?
 “Outgoing, does well interacting with
people, good with multitasking”

4. What do you do on a typical day in this
position?
 “Go through exercises with about six-
eight patients. Do initial evaluations and
progress notes. Do full one hour
treatments with each patient.”

5. What are the positive and negative
aspects of working in this field?
 “You get to meet people and be active all
day. The negative is the paperwork
behind the scenes can be overwhelming
at times.”

6. How many hours do you typically work each
week? Do you often work in the evenings or
weekends? Can you arrange your own hours?
 “I usually work 25-30 hours per week. I just
started another PRN position in acute at the
hospital that I work afternoons. No evenings or
weekends. I am usually done by about 4 or
5:00. With PRN, I can arrange my hours how I
want them.”

7. What is a typical starting salary?
Average salary? Other benefits?
 “Starting salary depends on the state but
it is usually around $60,000. The average
is around $70,000. If you work full time,
you get benefits, but since I am just doing
PRN and part time, I do not get benefits.”

8. What are some of the rewards of your
occupation?
 “Seeing your patients progress is very
rewarding. Doing an evaluation and then
seeing them for a tenth visit treatment, you can
see so much progress and it is rewarding to
know that you had a part in their healing
process.”

9. Please tell me more about your occupation
and its purposes?
 “Being a PT is knowing everything about the human
body and how it works so that you can understand
injuries or balance impairments. The more you
understand about the body, the easier it is for you to
come up with exercises to help promote healthy,
healing tissue. It isn’t all about exercise, there is a lot
of manual therapy done as well. Manual therapy is
putting your hands on the patient to adjust or
manipulate tissue to promote healing. The purpose is
to be a part in the healing process of a patient’s tissue.”

10. What is your job security in this
occupation?
 “We are in high demand. In moving to
Greenwood just recently, both my husband and
I are PT’s and we found a job immediately and
had multiple job offers. It also depends on the
setting that you want to go in. Right now, baby
boomers are a very significant aspect of our job
so many are looking at SNF’s, ALF’s.”

11. Is there a demand for people in this
occupation?
 “Yes, we are in high demand. As I
mentioned earlier, the baby boomer
population especially has caused PT’s to
be in very high demand.”

12. What are the problems you see
working in this field?
 “Overload of patients with not enough
therapists. Sometimes you have to work
overtime because there isn’t enough
help.”

13. How would you evaluate the future of this career
field? How do you see jobs in this field changing
in the future? What areas do you feel promise the
most opportunity? The most growth?
 “It will stay in high demand for at least the next
15 years. I feel that manual therapy is a huge
part of the job and more schools will teach
more manual therapy classes. Most
opportunity would be in skilled nursing facilities
and Assisted living facilities due to the baby
boomer generation.”

14. What opportunities for advancement are
there in this field? How will this job change
over the next 5 years? 10 years?
 “Research is changing how instructors teach.
New techniques and new material come out
everyday. Documentation will get more
strenuous as Medicare has so many rules. Its
hard to know what the future holds with
insurances as they are all becoming more like
Medicare.”

15. What special advice would you give
someone entering this field?
 “It’s not easy. School is tough which is good
because it prepares you for the real world.
Don’t be close-minded as to which branch you
want to choose. You might think you want to
do Acute, but then when you go on your
internships, you may change to outpatient, or
neuro, or pediatrics.”

16. What, if anything, do you wish you had
known before you entered this occupation?
 “Documentation only becomes more strenuous
as insurances need supported information.
Once you get used to the documentation, it
really is not that bad.”