Interview Summary

Melissa Vanderlinde is a physical therapist (PT) working at an out-patient clinic where she enjoys working with runners, middle/high school athletes, and pregnant and postpartum mothers.
Melissa also has her own business where she offers services to patients that include gait analysis, running-based rehabilitation, pregnancy and postpartum rehabilitation, and strength/conditioning coaching to prevent injury.
To become a PT, one needs to complete four years of undergrad, followed by two-to-three years of graduate school. There are also some accelerated programs that combine undergrad and PT school, allowing students to finish school in five years.
Melissa emphasizes how physical therapy means taking care of your body. She assesses patients with a holistic approach because a patient’s pain in one area can easily be caused by issues from another bodily system.
In her job, Melissa typically works 36 hours a week. Throughout the day, she supports patients in both the treatment room and a gym. She also uses a physical therapy pool with patients. Outside of her regular work day, she puts aside time for her own business a few hours of several days every week.
Melissa’s favorite part of her job is the rewarding feeling that she gets after watching her patients achieve their goals and feel better. However, because she is a people pleaser, Melissa’s job can also be difficult if she is unable to connect with patients or meet their specific needs.
Even as AI continues to grow, Melissa believes that the field of physical therapy will be protected and that the career outlook will maintain strong. AI cannot provide the in-person validation, massage therapy, and coaching that a real PT can.
Melissa encourages those interested in healthcare to consider their interests and shadow providers in order to get a better idea of the field before deciding on a career path.

Physical Therapy Interview With Melissa Vanderlinde

What does a day in your life as a physical therapist look like?

My schedule for my full-time job is set at 36 hours a week. I start my shifts at 8:00 a.m., and on my longer days, I work until 4:00 p.m. At my job, I do back-to-back one-hour sessions with patients. This means that I will typically do eight one-hour sessions each day. I personally opted to not have a lunch break because I want to finish my shift in eight hours, although I could have chosen to have one. Patient windows are typically anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour. Typically, I will see a patient for about 50 minutes and then save some time for myself to either document, eat food, or use the restroom.

At my job, I can either help patients in a treatment room or in the gym. We also have a physical therapy pool that I use with patients. These pools are between 96 and 98 degrees Fahrenheit (close to body temperature), and they are designed to help patients by decreasing their body load.

After my work day, I will go home and sometimes work on my own business. Typically, I try to work on my business a couple of days a week.

What does physical therapy mean to you?

Physical therapy means taking care of your body. In my job, I treat patients with a holistic approach because the pain that they are experiencing in one area is likely caused by a variety of other bodily systems. For example, you could have pain because of your running stride, the way you move in your spine, etc.

There are also some sub-specialties within the physical therapy realm. It’s a little different from physicians who have designated specialties. Every PT who graduates from school is automatically trained to be an orthopedic PT. However, PTs are taught in school about how to treat everything, so they could also focus specifically on neurology, skill nursing facility work, geriatrics, or pediatrics. There are also always ways to further your education in the pathway that you choose. Personally, I have specified myself in the areas of running and women’s health. I especially have a passion for helping women who are either pregnant or postpartum.

Can you tell us about yourself?

My name is Melissa Vanderlinde, and I am a physical therapist (PT) at an out-patient cash-based clinic called Embody Health and Performance. I also started my own business called Empowered Stride PT and Performance, and it is a cash-based women’s health mobile clinic. Not only is my business virtual, but it can also be within people’s homes or in public settings depending on patients’ accessibility and comfort levels. Some of the services that I offer include data analysis, running-based rehab, and strength/conditioning coaching to help prevent injury.

My goal as a PT is to prevent injury in patients and to provide help as they continue building fitness. The groups that I typically support are athletes and women (postpartum and pregnant).

In my spare time, I coach cross country at Wayzata High School and enjoy involving myself in the running world. I am an avid long-distance runner and have run many marathons.

Full Q&A With Melissa Vanderlinde

What is your favorite part of being a physical therapist?

My favorite part of being a PT is having the ability to see success in my patients. It feels really rewarding to watch my clients reach their goals and feel better. Ironically, in medicine, it is actually good when providers begin to see a patient less because it means that they are recovering and do not need as much treatment. Therefore, I feel very accomplished when I begin to see a patient less frequently because I know that I successfully helped them.

How much education is required to become a physical therapist?

To become a PT, you will need to complete four years of undergrad followed by two-to-three years of graduate school depending on the program you choose to attend. There are also some accelerated programs that combine undergrad and PT school, allowing you to finish your schooling in five years. In my case, I got signed to run cross country and track for the University of Minnesota Duluth. During college, I studied their exercise science program. In general, many undergrads who are on a pre-PT track choose to study kinesiology, biology, exercise science, or exercise physiology.

If you want to go directly into graduate school after undergrad, then you will need to apply to PT school by your mid-senior year of college. These applications typically open in the fall, but depending on the school you’re applying to, they can also open sometime in November. After submitting your applications, you have to wait for a while before you know if you have been chosen to interview for a school. You will not know until after your interview whether you have been accepted into a program or not.

Residency for PTs is different from residency from doctors because it is not required. These residencies are additional schooling where you work at a clinic to gain more training. Although you get paid for a residency, it is often not as much as you would in a regular job because it is still considered schooling. These residencies are typically in the areas of orthopedics, sports medicine, pelvic health, and spinal treatment. A lot of PTs, however, do not attend a residency because they have already gained the experience they need for their jobs in school. This is also the reason why many PTs complete continuing education instead because they learn new skills that were not taught to them in school. The only difference is that residency is more similar to school with instructors and that it will give you more credentials and letters after your name as a certified specialist. However, any PT could technically study and take a test to be a certified specialist without going to residency.

How did you become interested in physical therapy?

When I was in high school, a PT came to visit my cross country team to go over our warm-up exercises. Afterwards, I stuck around and asked him lots of questions about his profession. This was my first time being exposed to the field, and it sparked my initial interest in becoming a PT.

Then, during the summer before my senior year of high school, I got patellar tendinitis (also known as runner’s knee). I actually ended up getting treatment from the same PT who had helped our cross country team. At my first appointment, I came in prepared with what I thought my diagnosis was. After explaining why I thought I had patellar tendinitis, my PT told me that my diagnosis was spot-on, and then he asked if I knew how to treat it. At the time, I had no clue. However, my passion for PT grew from there because I started to learn how to solve these problems within my body. This made me feel very accomplished and inspired me to pursue exercise science and PT in college.

What advice would you give to someone who is interested in the healthcare field and is trying to figure out what profession is best for them?

I would suggest that the person asks themselves what their passion is. Asking questions about whether you like to talk with people, if you want to be an assistant, or if you want to be more of the main person running the show is really important.

I also highly recommend that this person shadows while they’re early in undergrad because they will still have lots of time to then decide what they want to do. Also, any hour spent shadowing a provider from any field counts as an hour towards graduate school, which can be very beneficial in the long run.

What is the career outlook for physical therapy?

I would definitely say that the career outlook as a whole for physical therapy is good. Specifically with AI, it can make things tricky for everyone, even doctors. For example, someone could search up “I’m having pain at the top of my shoulder,” and Chat GPT or Gemini can generate a response for them. Sometimes my coworkers and I sarcastically call AI “the medical doctor” because a lot of people will try to ask it for clinical advice. However, what I have been seeing is that people will still go to their doctor to get advice and help even if AI answered their question.

Although PT is very manual and hands-on, I also think that it’s important to remember that there is a virtual side to the job, such as strength coaching. AI cannot judge people’s form or perform massage-based work on patients, so I believe that this side of PT will always be safe. I would also say that people like in-person validation. You can tell AI your concerns, and it will switch its answers based on how it thinks you want a response. While AI will always try to agree with people, our role as PTs is to be honest and not always agree with patients, which is really important.

What are the biggest challenges of being a physical therapist?

One of the difficult things with physical therapy is return on investment. The schooling to become a PT costs a lot of money, and it is almost equivalent to the cost of PA or medical school. However, the income that you receive is about a third of what you pay to go to school. This can especially be challenging with interest rates on loans because it means that you will spend a good amount of your career paying off your student loans.

Challenges can also arise on the clinical side of my job because I cannot always please everybody. Many PTs go into their careers with the mindset that they want to help and be liked by everyone. PTs typically love talking to and helping patients, so it can be difficult if the personalities of the provider and patient do not match or if patients are not satisfied with their treatment. As a result, you need to be able to learn to not take things personally, which can definitely be hard if you are a people pleaser.

Finally, it can be difficult when you do not know all the answers to patients’ questions. For example, I tend to work more commonly in the running and women’s health realm, meaning that I have more experience supporting patients with lower extremity problems. Although I also know a lot about the upper extremities, I might not always have the answers to patients’ questions, which can be challenging.