The year 2020 has required agility and grace to navigate the ever-changing landscape of life in a pandemic. This especially holds true for recent graduates of the George Washington University (GW) School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS) Doctorate Physical Therapy (DPT) Program.
It began in March when students’ final clinical education experiences were cut short by several weeks as the country shut down to contain the virus. Then in May, rather than the customary in-person graduation festivities, GW and the DPT program quickly switched gears and held an online graduation ceremony to celebrate the Class of 2020. Many graduates had plans for parties, road trips, and joining the workforce, but instead they found themselves in limbo as licensure exams were postponed and residency programs and job offers were put on hold.
Ray Strazzulla (DPT’20) is one of the lucky ones. In August, Strazzulla was able to continue his educational journey at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill orthopedic residency program. “In my clinical placements I often found myself wondering how I could advance my clinical skill set to the level of the clinicians I admired the most. The solution I came up with was furthering my education and mentoring under highly regarded clinicians in a residency program,” he said. Strazzulla shares that the residency is giving him exposure to a variety of different learning opportunities. His schedule is now split between didactic work, mentorship sessions, and direct patient care. “I am so appreciative of my time at GW where I got to grow with my amazing cohort and brilliant faculty. My goal is to hopefully pay forward my knowledge and experiences to help develop aspiring physical therapy students,” he added.
Due to this tumultuous time not all DPT graduate students are doing exactly what they initially planned after graduation. Shira Racoosin (DPT’20) had planned to start a residency program in July. Sadly, after COVID-19 hit, her program decided to postpone the start date. “I began to worry about what was next and I was eager to start working in the physical therapy world,” Racoosin said. As a result, she reached out to PTs in her area and a fellow GW alumni offered her an internship at his company that has since turned into a job. Racoosin now finds herself working as a mobile physical therapist who travels throughout the community to treat patients in the comfort of their own home. “My current physical therapy path has been different than I expected and I do not know what the future holds, but I do hope to continue to take the necessary steps to becoming the best clinician I can be,” Racoosin said.
Recent graduates ready to join the workforce have also met challenges. For Marie Blasi (DPT’20), job-hunting at a time when many companies closed or had hiring freezes made the process difficult. “There were so many obstacles that came our way once graduating including having to delay taking our board exam and the limited amount of companies that were actually looking to hire,” Blasi said. Her job search came to an end when she was hired at an inpatient rehab facility in Massachusetts. She feels lucky to find a job doing the type of physical therapy she always envisioned herself doing. “Inpatient rehab interests me the most because I love the interdisciplinary aspect of patient care and the wide variety of patient diagnoses that we see,” Blasi said.