We have talked about moving and pursuing travel for many years and have finally decided take the leap with travel therapy. For those less familiar with it, travel employment is when healthcare professionals travel away from their home to fill needs for employment through short term contracts with health care companies. Travel employment in health care can vary widely based on employment location, setting, and length of contract. We are able to embrace this opportunity as an occupational therapist (OT) and physical therapist (PT) pair by working with the same company to be placed in the same city or area for work. Like any job there are many pros and cons, but travel therapy will allow us to travel more, (hopefully) work a little less, and explore how we want to specialize within our professions.
Finding Our First Placement: Figuring out where to start and finding our first placement was definitely not a stress free process. As a PT or OT in the United States, we each need to have a separate license in every state in order to practice there…. And of course each state has a completely different process which takes weeks to months. We did our research and started on the license process as soon as we could in our preferred states, but found out shortly that it would not work out as easily as we thought. We hoped and anticipated that we be able to start in Arizona or Colorado in September with an overall goal of going towards the west coast. With one hiccup after another we had to change our plans and be flexible (this seems to be an emerging theme in this adventure). We had to switch our strategy and seek positions in states that had shorter license processing times. Over two weeks we found our list of off limit states decreasing and applied for positions in Iowa, Washington D.C., North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and Washington. Then we crossed our fingers and waited.
Where We Are Going: In a very chaotic string of days we traveled through New York State while interviewing with anyone who called and finding coffee shops with wifi to work on our licenses. After several days of worry we were relieved to have some options to consider and quickly made our decision. We are very excited to share that we have accepted positions in Washington and Oregon. We will be living in Kennewick, WA which is part of the Tri Cities in southeast Washington state. Patrick will be working in Kennewick, WA, and I will be working just across the state line in a small town in Oregon. While we have been researching our destination, we know there is much more to learn and are excited to explore during our time in the area. We have learned so far that this area has a more temperate climate than we thought, they have some good wine country, and it is about 3.5 hours from Portland, OR and Seattle, WA.
Our Next Step: Over the next several weeks we have to go through the onboarding employment process and keep our fingers crossed that our licenses will be processed quickly. We hope to both be starting our positions by the end of October. Now we get to start the more exciting part of the whole process- planning our road trip across the country. Our trip will take 36-48 hours (not the fun part) depending on how many stops we make, but we are planning to break it up with trips to cities, national parks, and monuments along the way. Although our start to travel therapy has been different than we anticipated, we are very excited for our first placements and are ready to explore!
Good luck! What a great way to explore career options & new cities. Thanks for doing the blog so we can follow your activities. Have fun.
So very excited for both of you! Can’t wait to hear about your adventures.
Be safe driving today! Love you two!