Emily Kelly chose physical therapy because a torn ACL at 14 showed her what one-on-one care could do. She found her dream clinic, treated patients for an hour each, and loved the work. Then a new grad started questioning what she believed about pain, and the clinical identity she had spent years building started to come apart.

Emily is now a product manager at Prompt, a health tech company building software for rehabilitation providers in the US.

This conversation covers what it actually took to get from one to the other. A pay structure that punished the qualification it demanded. The emotional cost of being the clinician who takes everything home. A healthcare innovation conference that lit something up. And a series of deliberate, unglamorous decisions that most career transition stories skip over entirely. If you are a health professional who knows something needs to shift but cannot see the steps from where you are, this episode lays them out honestly.

We explore:

• What pain science does to a clinician's sense of who they are in the room
• The emotional cost of clinical empathy that no one talks about at university
• A pay structure that punishes the qualification it demands
• What hiring managers actually notice when a clinician interviews for a non-clinical role
• The unglamorous middle of moving from physical therapy to health tech product management

About Emily Kelly

Emily Kelly is a physical therapist and product manager at Prompt, a health tech company building practice management software for rehabilitation providers. Based in Denver, Colorado, she spent eight years in outpatient physical therapy before moving through customer success and leadership into product.

• LinkedIn: Emily Kelly
• Mentioned: Meredith Caston / The Non-Clinical PT, Lorimer Moseley (pain science researcher), Peter O'Sullivan, Adriaan Louw

Career Cliniq Resources

If this episode has you wondering where else your clinical expertise could take you, the StreamAhead Assessment maps your interests across eight healthcare work streams and shows you options you might not have considered yet.

Take StreamAhead HERE!

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