Difficulty Finding And Keeping Weekend Staff With The Right Skill Mix
Allied health staff frequently commented on the need for a pool of experienced staff with broad-ranging and current skills to cover weekend shifts. This was seen as challenging to achieve, especially when one staff member covers the entire hospital.
Speech Pathologist : Our clinicians on the weekend have to understand the whole gamut of patients because they are working hospital wide its hard to get adequately skilled staff across the continuum.
Retaining staff, ensuring adequate supervision, and maintaining currency of skills was also seen as a challenge. Provision of supervision and training for weekend staff was felt to be extremely difficult and reviewing documentation was often regarded as the only way to audit performance. Supervision structures for weekend staff were perceived to be weak compared to that for weekday staff.
Speech Pathologist : Weekend staff do not participate in mandatory training and so feel quite fragmented and removed from the rest of the team. From a safety and a roundness of experience, having access to training would be fantastic. Some may be stay at home mums during the week and the last training they went to was 5 years ago.
In Hospital B, where training was provided, having to frequently replace and train workers was a problem that contributed to the overall cost of the service.
What Are Normal Physical Therapist Hours
The typical Physical Therapist hours can range between 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM depending on the clinic and work setting. Clinics usually try to have hours that accommodate the working public, so its common to find settings that open at 7AM or earlier and stay open until 7PM or later.
As a Physical Therapist, I work four, ten-hour day starting at 8AM and ending at 6:30 PM. My day off is Friday, which is not common, but actually works out well for my patients.
As an outpatient PT, I typically see patients two times a week, unless they absolutely need three visits that week. So working four longer days allows me to schedule patients on a Monday/Wednesday or a Tuesday/Thursday interval.
The Right Person Delivers The Right Service
It was clear that nurses valued allied health expertise in assessment and intervention, and this was highlighted on weekends when there was less access to experienced medical staff.
Nurse : if you have junior , or an intern on, and the registrar is really busy, and you have a patient who’s a bit chesty it is a huge help to have a physio there to listen to their chest and help facilitate the care for that patient. That’s more important on the weekend because we don’t have all the medical staff on that we normally would.
Respect for specific allied health skills was also expressed in terms of professional boundaries with some nurses very clear about which tasks lay outside their own scope of practice.
Nurse : We don’t have the necessary skills to know which is the appropriate gait aid to use so we’ll just mobilize patients with two nurses rather than with the appropriate gait aid. patients falling and nurses injuring themselves.
In contrast, some nursing staff felt able to take on some tasks seen as the traditional domain of allied health.
Extending from this respect for professional expertise, nurses comments revealed an underlying sense of security that came from being able to draw on allied health input over the weekend.
This was also evident in some nurses expressing a lack of confidence in reporting domestic violence or abuse issues, preferring to rely on the expertise of the social workers.
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A Significant Job Perk With Zero Cost
There really isnt any extra cost to the employer to allow someone the ability to work 4 10-hour days, especially if the production stays the same and patients are filling the schedule. For the employee, it may seem like a significant job perk to work 4 longer days and to have an entire day off. For the employer, it costs nothing for this job perk and might be a great way to incentivize therapists to stay.
Do you work 4 10-hour days a week? If so, tell us how you like the setup?
Mitigating The Risks Associated With High Workloads On Mondays And Fridays
In all focus groups, allied health staff commented that Mondays and Fridays were the busiest days of the week, with the highest risk of patients being missed or receiving very abbreviated services. There was a shared perception that the presence of the weekend service mitigated this risk.
Occupational Therapist : Fridays are a bit the same because you’re not here for 2 days, so there’s this sense in the department that Fridays and Mondays are the worst days of the week.
Physiotherapist: if you pick up a new patient at 3.30 on Friday, and there are issues, that’s when you think “Thank God there’s a weekend service so I can get them to follow them up”.
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Reducing Pressure On Weekend Nursing Staff
All staff felt that weekend nurses were under significant workload pressure, considering the lower levels of weekend medical and other staff.
Medical staff : There’s a skeleton medical staff and that can consume some extra nursing time, making it quite difficult for people to take on extra things
Nurse : I think we have enough to do. I think we already have too much to do! I see nursing in a rush. I see cut corners everywhere. I see quality of patient care replaced with quantity, and I see this increasing.
Nurse : The physio getting out of bed for the first time is important to us, because that is very time consuming for us to do…. it gives us that time back to put back into our own clinical work.
Whilst most nurses agreed that workloads were manageable, some felt that quality could be compromised leading to poorer patient health outcomes.
Nurse : most nurses pick up jobs, and try to do the best they can within the time and effort they’ve got, but it doesn’t always work to the betterment of the patient. We’re just not well enough qualified in that area we do the best we can but we don’t always make the best decisions
Deep Tissue Laser Therapy
A scientifically proven way to reduce pain and inflammation. Laser therapy generates a photochemical response in damaged tissue by a process called photobiomodulation. This process stimulates healing on a cellular level by enabling cells to more rapidly produce energy . Treatments are fast, safe, painless, and most patients experience results after only a few sessions. This type of therapy allows for deeper tissue penetration, resulting in fast, efficient and consistent results. Sessions range anywhere from 4 15 minutes. If youre looking for other options besides drugs or surgery, laser therapy might be a great option for you.
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Program Details & Curriculum
The emphasis of the curriculum philosophy is a holistic, humanistic approach in which the individual is respected for his or her own uniqueness, including client reaction to impairment or disability.
The use of a hybrid model that combines traditional and lifespan models reinforces a primary tenet of the philosophy: the physical therapist treats the total person, not only the individual’s injury or disability.
Professional Courses: 83 Credits
Clinical Education: 13 Credits
Total: 96 Credits
The physical therapy curriculum builds upon itself therefore students most complete the coursework in sequence. . Visit the online catalog to view the full curriculum
Students are required to complete a B.S. or B.A. degree and all of the science prerequisites for Physical Therapy prior to entering into the DPT program.
Website: .
Students are eligible to take the National Physical Therapy Examination, administered by the Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy.
If you need to contact the Physical Therapy Program/Mercy College directly, please call 674-7828 or email .
To be eligible for graduation students must complete all required course work with a GPA of 3.0 or higher. The coursework includes the completion of research and clinical education requirements.
Academic Advising
Clinical Education Grades
A student will not be allowed to enter into Advanced Clinical Education if they are on probation.
Background Checks
Academic Integrity
Academic Probation
How To Negotiate A 4 Day Workweek
If you like the idea of working 4 10-hour days, consider presenting it to your employer when they make an offer. Of course, its also possible to make the change at your current employer if you approach it correctly.
Focus on how working 4 10-hour days will benefit the employer and the patients. Consider these points:
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Weekend Staff Who Are Risk
Another theme common to nurses and allied health was that weekend staff often came from a separate staffing pool to the weekday staff. This was perceived as less efficient, in that staff needed time to familiarize themselves with the patients listed for them, and they did not have the awareness of contextual issues or available resources that could only be gained by attending weekday ward or team meetings. In some cases, even when familiar with the patient, they were still unwilling to make decisions they perceived as risky.
Occupational Therapist : We have staff that work here on the weekends that dont work during the week. We need to be very careful with clinical handovers to get the job finished off. Weekend staff are often from different organizations so dont know our procedures all that well
Nurse 1 : They dont really know the patient so they need our input lots of our input – to make a decision and sometimes they cant make a decision. They leave it for the next day
Interviewer: so they hold it over to the weekday staff?
Nurse: Ive seen it happen they cant make decision even if the physio has said, OK for discharge they say, I dont know! I think well wait for tomorrowthey dont work here during the week they dont want to take a risk.
Physical Therapists In New York City
Physical therapy is a field of healthcare that finds and treats physical disabilities in an individual with injuries or disease. A physical therapist is a mobility and functionality expert who evaluates the cause of the impairments and works on correcting the issues. PTs work on improving loss of motion by providing long-lasting corrections through physical therapy. These corrective exercises help patients restore movement and treat the source of pain. Physical therapy encompasses several tools, such as various functional movement screens, corrective movement patterns and range of motion/flexibility assessment.
With physical therapy, patients learn about their bodies, how they move and the cause of their pain or disability. PTs work closely with their patients to help them indoctrinate changes in their lives, and they can provide long-term treatment. Physical therapists can practice in various settings, namely schools, outpatient clinics, homes, fitness training facilities and workplaces.
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How To Apply To The Doctor Of Physical Therapy Program
General information regarding eligibility for the Graduate Program in Physical Therapy may be obtained from the Physical Therapist Centralized Application Service at . Information may also be obtained by contacting the Physical Therapy Program Office at 674-7828 or Mercy College Graduate Admissions Office at 1.800.Mercy.NY.
Application deadline is January 15th.
All applicants are required to complete an application packet on PTCAS . Candidates with a GPA of 3.6 or higher can submit applications by October 15 for consideration for early decision. Only complete applications will be reviewed.
A complete PTCAS application includes the following:
- The Admissions GPA consists of the 8 most recent graded science prerequisite courses. If a prerequisite course has been retaken within the last five years, an average of the course grades will be calculated in the admissions GPA
Students must have a Bachelor’s Degree prior to matriculation. Students may apply with either a B.A. or a B.S. there is no preference to one type over the other. Prerequisite courses may be completed as part of a Bachelor’s Degree, an Associate’s Degree, or as a non-degree student. No more than 75 credits will be accepted from two-year institutions. Online labs for any of the below classes are not acceptable . ALL students must complete the following prerequisite courses with a C or higher :
- GRE scores must be received by PTCAS before submission of the application.
Insufficient Investment To Generate Benefits
All groups expressed frustration regarding the inability of weekend staff to service all referrals on busy weekends, or to service individuals sufficiently to generate measurable benefit.
Weekend Speech Pathologist : You dont have enough hours and so you are just doing the clinical risk stuff and that wont have an impact on the length of stay because youre not getting to the functional maintenance stuff.
Some medical staff questioned the value of having low levels of weekend allied health cover, as this could mean that assessments were cursory and did not result in real progress in the patients condition or movement toward discharge.
Medical staff : are possibly a little more time-pressured, and unable to guarantee to be able to do as comprehensive a review of the patients issues.
Medical staff : If its not funded well, there is a service but its not doing what it could potentially do its only got a very limited coverage
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How Our Values Prioritize You
These are our Core Values and what they mean for you:
P= People first.Our patient needs are our #1 priority. As such, we remained open for patients in need throughout the COVID pandemic, both in-person and telehealth.
R= Results that are meaningful. We partner with you to set, measure, and achieve the goals that are most important to you.
O= Openness and Transparency. We believe an educated consumer is our best patient and we provide free community workshops, ongoing patient education, and a free copy of our Amazon book Secrets of a Pain-free Life to patients.
P= Positivity and Optimism. We only hire positive and optimistic people. Work and therapy should be enjoyable and supportive.
T= Treat people like family. Our team supports and encourages each other. We have long-term patient relationships going back decades, with care of the grandparents, parents, and children. We genuinely care about our patients, their families, each other, and our community. We honor a Patient of the Month with a donation to the charity of their choice and we participate in the Franklin Food Pantry, the Santa Foundation, and other charitable organizations. We can help with Physical therapy near me open on weekends.
We Offer
Are Video Visits With A Physical Therapist Online Covered By My Insurance
Most insurers provide coverage for video visits at the same cost as in-person visits. You can search on Zocdoc specifically for Physical Therapists in New York who accept your insurance for video visits by selecting your carrier and plan from the drop-down menu at the top of the page. We recommend you check with your insurance carrier directly to confirm your coverage and out of pocket costs for video visits.
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Health Professions Clinical Simulation & Learning Labs
When it comes to training the best future health care professionals, who are prepared to handle anything they might face in their profession Mercy College has an invaluable tool our Health Professions Clinical Simulation and Learning Labs. The Dobbs Ferry 12,000 square-foot space includes specialized labs designed to simulate different disciplines within a health care facility.
What Does A Weekend Physical Therapist Do
As a weekend physical therapist, your primary responsibilities are to provide PT to each patient and help them regain as much movement as possible. During each shift, you may discuss with patients about the progress of their rehab, coordinate with doctors and other caregivers, and determine the best techniques to use with each patient. Some physical therapists only work on the weekends, either as a part-time job or as a supplement for another role. However, other physical therapy jobs may require working weekend shifts based on current staffing and patient needs, which may not be limited to Saturday and Sunday shifts.
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Benefits Of Physical Therapy
Physical therapists actively participate in patient education and prescribing exercise. After having diagnosed the problem, they formulate variable treatment plans, unique to each patients needs. They can also work with physicians to ensure that the patient receives all-inclusive care. Apart from these, a PT can help with :
- Restoring mobility that can, in turn, treat pain.
- Your recovery as the PT works closely with patients to solve every individual case with the same precision.
- Avoiding surgery for a condition like osteoarthritis.
Bridging The Gap: From Physical Therapy To Full Recovery And Performance
At Ohio Valley Sports Medicine, we offer a particular program to help patients”bridge the gap” between Physical Therapy and recovery/performance. After discharge from physical therapy, some patients may not be 100% ready to return to full function, recreational activities, and sports. Our Bridge Program offers additional strength training, improvement in range of motion, and ongoing guidance for patients who have completed their Physical Therapy. Our goal at Ohio Valley Sports Medicine is to bring patients back to their full strength, a stronger mental state, and overall improved fitness.
For more information about our Imaging Center, please contact us at.
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Our Patients Are Feeling Great
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B. Westfall
The facilities are state of the art and offer a wide range of equipment, devices and treatment rooms necessary to provide the best care possible. I never understood or appreciated the importance of physical therapy until I needed it. Bodies in Balance is the answer.
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J. Reeves
Everyone I encountered at Bodies in Balance during my treatment was encouraging and caring. We are so lucky to have this team here in Wilmington! Thanks so much Bodies in Balance!
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E.Hanson
I feel welcome and at home upon my arrival at every visit, and Im greeted by name. In this day and age thats something to be said. Kudos guys and gals, keep up the great work!
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B. Howey
Super nice staff and very attentive to your needs. They are very thorough in asking questions about your symptoms, pain, etc. and they really seem to genuinely care. I actually FELT like a patient they desire to help and not just a number to fill an empty slot in schedule.
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L. Myrick
I have been in therapy for a month. What an improvement that I never thought Id see! Scored 56 on a machine 2 weeks ago today scored a 72! Yea!! Everyone is so helpful and excellent in what they do!! I would recommend this facility for sure!! Wish I didnt have to stop!
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C. Hine
Everyone knows you by name and are very friendly and helpful. Looking forward to getting into the Living Well Program.