Physical Therapy Career Tips

The definition of “Physical Therapist” looks something like this- PT’s help patients, including accident victims and individuals with disabling conditions such as low-back pain, arthritis, heart disease, fractures, head injuries, and cerebral palsy by providing services that restore function, improve mobility, relieve pain, and prevent or limit permanent physical disabilities. They restore, maintain, and promote overall fitness and health. Or in simpler terms, PT’s help people feel better when they have body pains. Many people don’t think much of physical therapy until they have to endure it.
For people who are just looking for some type of work to do to get them by, physical therapy is not the job for you. Here are a couple keys to helping someone who desires to by a physical therapist:
1. Get a bachelors degree. It does not matter what the major is however as long as you meet starting requirements for graduate school in physical therapy. Many times the requirements are two classes each in anatomy, physiology, chemistry, and physics. Sometimes students also need an exercise class and course work in psychology.
2. Choose a graduate school with a (preferably) very elite physical therapy department. Then you will find the requirements of your undergraduate courses and the number of hours you need to be exposed to physical therapy.
3. After step two, you will need to begin to volunteer at a rehabilitation center or hospital. “You will have to gain experience in both impatient and outpatient settings.” (Most times preferably at two different locations). For graduate school almost all schools require at least 50-100 hours of volunteer experience.
4. A step that is kind of a goof, but also helps a lot is to get along well with your physical therapy staff because you can uses them as references for future careers or employers.
5. When you volunteer, and once you are done, you need to be able to understand the role of a volunteer in the physical therapy setting. Many times as a volunteer you will be responsible for pushing people in wheelchairs and helping clean up.
6. As training or volunteering it is key that you do everything to keep patients comfortable. The main reason people go to physical therapy is because they have or had pain with a part of their body, so it is very important to try and make them as comfortable and relaxed as possible. With this however you need to be very careful that you don’t do anything that the physical therapist himself/herself is required to do. You can be there more for them as moral support.
7. A lot of physical therapist say that it helps if you workout. With a lot of patients you may need to be able to support all of their weigh, or have to bend/stand and stabilize patients with limited mobility. If patients are in wheelchairs, you may have to be able to pick them up (to help them get onto the bed, or to get back into the chair), while also being gentle on them.
8. Study effectively, not hard. If you study hard it is shown to wear you out and you won’t retain the information as well as if you had studied more effectively. An example of studying more effectively than studying hard would be if you studied for twenty minutes, than took a break. Instead of sitting down and cramming for an hour or two or even more! If you study for shorter periods of times and more efficiently, you will retain more information.
9. The last step is vital, get recommendations. Every time you volunteer as for a letter of recommendation that you can submit to the graduate schools that you are looking at.