Burned out from Physical Therapy. What now?

It happens to the best of us. We all have our days. Be it a physical therapist, an actor, a brain surgeon... we all get tired of our careers sometimes. There's nothing wrong with it and frankly I'd be concerned if someone didn't question themselves now and then. Thinking critically about your career and what it means to you sounds like nothing more than a sign of positive brain activity in my opinion. 

Thanks to a tweet from @physioweb we caught a post that stopped us in our tracks today. From the Physical Therapy Webspace forum someone posted a plea for help. 

i have been practicing for 30 years as a pediatric physical therapist. 20 of those in publicschools. i'm just curious if there are other therapists school settings that do notbelieve the service they provide. so, how you make it through year? not, perhaps i can be enlightened about providing. 

thanks.
-carolb4

In the past few months I've been entrenched in this wonderful new(to me anyway) world of rehabilitation therapy and hadn't stopped to think about those that might be burned out on it. It stopped me in my tracks to say the least. Such a rewarding and well regarded career... I was surprised to see this. Most disturbing were the over 80 views of the post with no responses.

What do you all think? Do you ever get burned out with physical therapy? How do you overcome it?

Most importantly... any advice for Carol?

Comments

[A]

I can relate to Carol! I have only been a PT for 5 years and I just don't think I can make it another 30. There is no way. But once you invest the time in school (7 years now!) it is hard to justify either going back to get another degree or just quitting altogether. I unfortunately don't have any advice for Carol, but I know how she feels. It is not a rewarding career when 10 out of the 12 patients your expected to see in 8 hours hate PT and don't want to do it and you don't have time to try to be positive because you're running around trying to find the next patient. Or when the patients think they're staying in a hotel and they get mad at you for asking them to come to PT when they're watching their soaps. I need a different career, badly.