I started the Gun Physio Academy with the aim of providing a mentoring service for clinic managers and business owners.
Having been through the rigmarole of COVID and come out the other side, I feel like I have plenty of stories to tell and many thoughts to share.
However, I am hopeful that this won’t be a one-way process.
Along the way, I’d appreciate any comments, feedback and most of all, constructive criticism.
We all have thoughts about how to make things better, at no stage would I suggest that my thoughts are any better than anyone else’s.
And importantly, without walking a mile in another’s shoes, it’s really impossible to know whether my perspective is a true reflection of broader trends, or in fact just my perspective.
With that little spiel out of the way, let’s take a look at the issues I am hoping to confront.
The problem in physio; the birth of the academy
Physiotherapists in private practice often struggle to achieve their personal goals.
A recent APA survey provided data from physiotherapists looking to leave the profession.
A whopping 33% cited salary; 29% work-life balance and 38% complained of feeling burned out.
This is definitely something I too have felt throughout my career.
Often I have felt forced to choose between having a fulfilling career and having a personal life.
Evening work and weekends are the norm for private practitioners, particularly those first starting out.
On top of this we are forever upskilling, be it post graduate training, weekend courses, attending talks and reading articles or listening to podcasts in our spare time.
Beyond this, the elephant in the room is burnout and there will be plenty more on this topic later.
Including how I (eventually) identified with my own red flag.
A zero sum game
We are effectively asked to sacrifice time from our personal lives in order to improve our work life, eg: working evenings and/or weekends to be a busy physio.
As we make these concessions, our work life improves but our home life goes in the opposite direction.
For young therapists, this often isn’t such an issue; we can take solace in a morning off and a gym session.
For someone with 2 young children, this was no longer something that even I was willing to concede.
Unfortunately, as we part with more personal time for PD events and relationship marketing, it starts to breed feelings of resentment towards work.
Often it’s our ego that eventually pops – the monkey himself finally says, “no”! We pushback and slowly withdraw from work.
But inevitably, we start to feel the guilts.
The lack of career progression eventually overcomes the inertia and the cycle starts again.
This cycle can go on for years, even decades, through various stages of life.
But eventually, something changes, either something at work triggers us OR we change.
We decide that we no longer wish to play on this merry-go-round and we carve out our exit.
Physiotherapy already faces a high attrition rate at five to 10 years of clinical practice. In recent years we have seen retention rates soar with an estimated 55 to 60% leaving the profession within 10 years. The true attrition rate is likely higher.”
APA response to Jobs & Skills Summit paper
For a profession so widely respected in the community, it seems rather counter-intuitive how dissatisfied physiotherapists often are.
It is certainly surprising when I mention to friends from other professions what our median income is.
Most people think it looks a lot more like this!
Physio has it’s own pain too
Well meaning therapists come into the world of private practice without any grounding in key areas such as sales, customer relations and even understanding our own payslips can be challenging.
Well meaning business owners enter the race with very little knowledge of business operations, marketing or finance.
Why??
Because the physiotherapy degree contains no business training.
Zero – not a single subject on accounting or business development.
Nothing on negotiation or even something basic such as professional networking.
The consequences are clear for everyone to see.
Many small businesses survive, but they fail to thrive.
Owners often wear too many hats, work long hours and struggle to keep up with administrative demands.
Quickly they become too busy to upskill themselves and fail to find avenues to alleviate the cashflow burden of needing to treat to stay afloat.
This creates another vicious cycle.
This can have dire consequences, initially frustration and feelings of shame and guilt.
This often creates trouble with personal relationships and can lead to social isolation.
Inevitably burnout rears its ugly head.
Worst of all, one loses out on all the time they could be spending enjoying life.
Recently, staffing levels have fallen far below demand and the recruitment environment has been very challenging.
Creating a cocktail of problems for owners.
Junior physios, new graduates in particular, can often feel the pain of the business and it’s owner.
These young physiotherapists end up working the same long, difficult hours.
Services are often charged out at below market rates.
Such as accepting Enhanced Primary Care plans from Medicare without a gap.
This is something I did with my clinic for more than 2 years, but would never do again.
The tragedy of this story means fantastic therapists are often leaving the profession in droves.
Poor pay, a lack of work-life balance, low job satisfaction and above all else, poor mental wellbeing.
It is simply ridiculous that the physio profession, dedicated to caring for other people, takes such poor care of it’s own.
Physiotherapists should be able to achieve both career satisfaction and lifestyle balance.
We shouldn’t have to participate in a zero-sum game where nobody actually wins, not the owner, not the therapist and definitely not the client.
Gun Physio Academy exists to take you there.
Where to for Gun Physio Academy
Over the coming months I will take a deep dive into the challenges both therapists and owners deal with at the coalface.
I will consider how we can potentially solve some of these problems and create a win-win-win scenario for owners-therapists and their clients.
Having been a career physio for over 10 years before becoming an owner myself, I feel like I have a good understanding of both sides of this coin.
However, the path ahead is unclear, the journey will be confronting and at times controversial.
But hopefully, if I do this well, it will be an honest reflection of where we are at as a profession and where I think we need to go.
