Starting your clinical practice can be intimidating for recent graduates. Sure, you’ll have a caseload of patients to get to know, but you’ll also have to get familiar with policies, procedures, and the people you work with. You’ll have new problems to solve and little professional experience to draw on. No doubt about it: you’ll need plenty of support to get you off to a great start as a new clinician.

Some organizations leave new clinician hires to sink or swim. However, when you’re hired to do house calls with FOX Rehabilitation, we make sure you have time to learn our model of care and are surrounded by the resources you need. We’ll make your first few months on the job as successful as possible by offering three unique-to-FOX benefits.

1. FOX Provides Plenty of Ramp-Up Time

Other clinical settings may require you to start out fast. In some cases, new clinicians may only have a week or two until they have a full caseload — that means 50% of whatever your caseload needs to be the first week, and then 100% the next week. Of course, that can be quite stressful and overwhelming.

When you start working with FOX, you’ll have more time to get up to speed. As a new clinician, you have 6-8 weeks to ramp up to a full caseload. We want to give you a proper, unrushed introduction to the EMR (Raintree), the facilities, and your patients. That way, you have the time you need to work toward a deep understanding of critical material.

2. You’ll Receive Real-World Guidance From Your FOX Mentor

New clinicians need guidance as they begin their careers. Our mentorship program pairs new graduate hires with veteran clinicians to help you learn the ropes. Mentors have earned their way into this special role. They have to apply for their positions and score well on documentation review. Plus, they need to have a long and proven track record of success as a FOX clinician — so you can be sure you are getting trained by the best of the best.

In the beginning, FOX mentorship is highly structured. You and your mentor will meet face to face and/or have planned phone conversations every week to cover a variety of topics, like:

Best practices for Raintree (our EMR). FOX has a special relationship with Raintree, and you’ll get to know it well. We offer feedback that they often use to make improvements.
Scheduling your patients. When you’re ramping up, you can offer your patients lots of appointment time options. With a full caseload, it takes more time management savvy to work it all in.
Point of service documentation. You’ll learn to document treatment while you’re treating your patient. You’ll be more efficient and productive — and have far less post-treatment work.
Dementia. Patients with dementia have special needs, so you’ll learn special techniques and interventions.
How to advocate for your profession. We want you to find ways to advocate for your profession, and at FOX, there are many ways to do that. Join a committee, write an article for our Fresh FOX Content blog, educate via social media channels, appear on a podcast or support team events.

Your mentor is there for you any day, any time. You can call them when you’re out on patient visits — they’ll answer. And remember, the questions that will come up for you are probably more common than you think. Here are a few examples:

How do I phrase my phone call to a patient who lives at home?
How do I phrase my phone call to a power of attorney to let them know we received a patient order for physical, occupational, or speech therapy?
How do I handle insurance, co-insurance, and copays?
If I forget treatment equipment when I’m on a patient visit, what can I use instead?

In addition to your mentor, you’ll also have a Regional Director (RD) and a Regional Quality Assurance Liaison (RQAL) as part of your support team. Whereas your mentor handles most of your day-to-day questions, the RQAL handles documentation questions, and the RD can help with any higher-level questions.

In short, you’ll never have to worry about an unanswered question.

3. FOX Wants to Hear Your Feedback

We want to know how you are experiencing your new career at FOX. As a new hire, you’ll have the opportunity at several points in your training process to provide feedback through surveys. We want to know what you find valuable and helpful in real-time, and what areas you find lacking.

The survey will also encourage you to voice your true and honest opinions about your mentor, RD, and RQAL. In part the survey asks:

Do you feel comfortable scheduling your patient visits?
Did you have your weekly call? Did you talk about all the topics?
Did you have your face-to-face meeting?
What part of the program was done really well?
What kinds of suggestions do you have for the program?

Your RQAL will make sure all your personal concerns are addressed and incorporate your feedback into future iterations of the program.

Experience a Smooth Transition From Student to Professional Clinician With FOX Rehabilitation

Our newly graduated clinicians constantly tell us how much they learn and grow in the first months working with FOX. And all the resources that help facilitate that growth are permanent — as a FOX clinician, you’ll have support for the duration of your career.

If FOX Rehabilitation sounds like a good fit for you, learn more about a day in a FOX clinician’s life and check out clinical opportunities in your area.