03/02/2026
True Story: Sometimes the most important conversations happen over a croissant and tea 🥐🍵
This weekend, my husband and I stayed at a charming little bed & breakfast in Utah. Our breakfast chef, a bright, warm undergraduate studying Kinesiology, mentioned, completely unprompted, that she'd had to let go of her dream of becoming a DPT.
Not because she lacked the passion. Not because she lacked the capability.
Because the math simply didn't work.
The cost of the degree. The timeline. The expected starting salary stacked against her financial reality. She made the only logical choice available to her, and walked away from a profession that would have been lucky to have her💔
I just listened. I've been in the PT world for 33+ years. I've worked closely with DPT students. And I knew, sitting across that breakfast table, that this young woman had exactly what our profession needs more of.
This isn't a hypothetical problem we can continue to debate only in conference rooms and online forums.
Real people are making these calculations, these decisions, right now, and are NOT choosing PT. We're not just losing future clinicians. We're losing future colleagues. And our patients, who are already waiting, will keep waiting longer.
The future of our profession is being decided one quiet conversation at a time. What's one thing you'd change about the DPT pipeline? Please Share🩵
