Why am I excited to pay off my physical therapy student loans with Luna

I’m a physical therapist with over $200,000 worth of student loans and have been trying for over 3 years to discover side hustles to help increase my annual earnings and help pay off my student loans. 

I started as a new graduate working PRN or per diem for a local acute care facility. The pay was about $50 a hour - as a new graduate from PT that was amazing! But because I had a full time job, the only extra shifts I could get was the holidays or the weekends. 

The first year, I made roughly $100,000 between my full time job and the per diem job at a local hospital. I’m 100% not complaining, but I burnt myself out. I was working 6 to 7 days a week and I hardly saw my family nor my boyfriend. While everyone was having fun, I had to leave early to get to bed before my morning weekend shift. 

I had to end this PRN role because I moved across the country to New Jersey.  I really didn’t want to start up a new side job that too me away from any rest or weekends I had, so I instead created online side hustles, which many of you know today as Alternative Healthcare Careers and Debt Free PT. 

While having these side hustles has been very empowering and has provided me with an amazing set of skills, it is also very consuming. I think about my side hustles at night, drama from the side hustles bleed into my social or romantic life, and I’m often answering emails at 9pm on a Friday night. 

Where am I going with story? It’s basically to tell you that have a per diem PT job is tough and also creating online side hustles of your own are tough as well. While I do not regret either one, as they have made me the person today- I do try to point people to simpler routes to as least get started in. And I honestly feel that Luna is a pretty great side hustle to get started in. 

Why is Luna so enticing as a side hustle?

• You can work at night after work or during the day if you have a day off or get flexed off. You don’t only have to work the weekends. 

Not all PRN jobs outside of Luna will be limited to the weekends, I just want to make that clear. But it is a lot hard to find PRN jobs outside of platforms like Luna that need coverage on week nights.

So having this time flexibility is a really great advantage. It means that I can earn extra money but still get to have my weekends and holidays. 

• You can earn roughly $70 per hour for evaluations as well as treatments. 

Luna’s pay is really generous. In more former PRN jobs, I was only earning about $50 to $55 per hour, so $70 average pay is very generous and is almost a 50% increase in pay compared to my former per diem role. 

• I will feel safe going into people’s home because their app has “safety shield” a tracking technology that monitors if I’ve been in one spot too long. 

I’ve always wanted to work in home health, but as a women, there has always been some factors which have had me stray away from a PRN position in mobile care. One of them being the safety factor. 

So when I saw that Luna has a system in place to help therapists feel safer, I was really appreciative. 

So the system they have is called Safety Shield and if you are in one place for an abnormal amount of time while at work with Luna, they will message you and make sure you are safe. 

Also, you can always request not to have a certain patient again or leave a session if you feel your safety is compromised.

• I get to keep my patients.

Patients love continuity of care and having the same provider and so do I. I like having my same patients as it builds relationships and so the treatments become easier and the patients are less likely to bail on the last minute. 

• I get to treat one on one for 45-55 minutes. 

If you work PRN for various rehabilitation places, you may have to be double or triple booked each hour and have a really stressful day when you come in.

But with Luna, you get to really treat and serve the patient. You get almost a full hour with each patient. 

• I get to work as long or as little as I want

With most per diem roles, you have to work a full shift or about 8 hours. But with Luna, if I only want to work an hour a day then that’s simply what I request in the app. There’s no boss to try to push me for more, I have complete control over my schedule. 

• I get paid for no shows.

Home health positions are one of the highest paying positions for physical therapists. But this also comes at a risk - some patients may cancel or just never answer their door. You’ve now wasted your time and often, your employer will not reimburse you for your time. 

Luna will still pay you even if someone cancels. So there is very minimal risk for wasting your time when it comes to using Luna to earn extra money through in-home outpatient PT treatments. 

• Luna prioritizes commute for me, picking people only within a 30 min radius. 

The last thing I want to do is waste money and gas driving around trying to see patients on the side. Luna is at least recognizing this and trying their best to streamline systems. 

They have an awesome speech to text EMR system so I can document while I drive and they have a system that books appointments only within 30 minutes and if I have multiple patients, it books them in an order to maximize my time. 

So why am I choosing to earn extra money as a physical therapist with Luna?

Trust me when I say that I know how hard it is to make decent money on the side. With Luna, I get great wages, they maximize my time and safety, they respect my time with cancelation payments, and they still try to prioritize quality patient treatment with allowing me to have nearly a full hour with patients. 

If I have inspired you to learn more about Luna, you can click the link below and schedule a time to chat with Emilie and Ashley who are PTs just like you and me that work with Luna to ensure your happiness as well as your patients:  https://share.hsforms.com/1Tykc5DU9TRKLNc3iB6Snpg2rcdh?fbclid=IwAR33PYLP-MjLPYNT7hROCSqoMA0S7VKoSciFar61Soip8-1pFvqXar_zfJ0

Tell them you are from ACG or Alternative Careers and you’ll earn $100 after you see your first 10 patients! 

*Please note this is an affiliate link but we have negotiated with Luna so that you can earn $100 when you start so that you can have added benefit for using our link, thank you for your support!* 

Also, if you want to listen the webinar with did with them that further explains how Luna works, here is the video: