why physical therapy is important essay

Why I Want to Be a Physical Therapist, Essay Sample

Essay about why i want to become a physical therapist.

When I think of what a physical therapist does, the first thing that comes to mind is helping people get back on their feet after an injury or an illness. While that is true, there is much more to it than that. A physical therapist has many responsibilities and duties they must abide by in order to keep the public safe. The four main things they must be able to do are: diagnose and treat injuries, teach how to prevent those injuries from happening again, treat diseases related to movement, and serve as expert witnesses for injured workers.

In this essay, which I write with the help of a custom paper writing service , I will share my reasons for pursuing a career in physical therapy, highlighting the key factors that motivate me to take this path. 

Reasons Why I Want to be a Physical Therapist

Physical therapy is an absolutely enormous field – one of the largest in the healthcare industry. But, when I think about what I love most about being a physical therapist, it’s that it’s so versatile. The type of work you do can be tailored to fit whatever you enjoy doing most. Some people really enjoy working with athletes; others like making older adults feel as comfortable and mobile as possible. You can choose to focus your efforts on one age group or another, find a great mentor in someone who works with your preferred area of focus, or even become a specialist in a specific sport.

Inspiration from My Therapist

From early childhood, I enjoyed playing sports and working out. But all of that changed when I suffered a serious knee injury during my senior year of high school. After the initial shock and pain, I was faced with a difficult decision — either let it heal on its own or face months of physical therapy and rehabilitation. 

My physical therapist worked diligently to get me back on my feet, helping me understand how important it is to move our bodies for healing purposes. She showed me exercises designed to strengthen my muscles around the knee joint and increase my range of motion. With each activity, she carefully monitored my progress and pushed me to do more than what was comfortable to help my body heal faster. Her guidance helped me regain strength and mobility in my knee much quicker than if I had just left it alone to heal on its own. 

The experience of going through physical therapy inspired me to pursue a career as a physical therapist myself so that I can help others who are struggling with injuries or chronic pain find relief through movement, as I did. 

Positive Impact of Physical Therapy on Patients

The positive impact that physical therapy can have on patients is one of the most compelling reasons why I want to become a physical therapist. Physical therapy can help alleviate pain, improve range of motion, increase strength and flexibility, and prevent future injuries. It can also enhance the overall quality of life by promoting independence, confidence, and self-esteem.

For example, physical therapy can prove invaluable for those recuperating from surgery, such as a knee replacement. It assists in restoring patients’ strength and mobility and reduces the risk of complications like blood clots and infections. Additionally, physical therapy can be a game-changer for those with persistent conditions, like arthritis, multiple sclerosis, or Parkinson’s disease. Physical therapists collaborate with their patients to create tailored treatment plans that manage symptoms and enhance their overall quality of life.

Variety of Specialties

One of the reasons I am drawn to physical therapy is the wide range of specialties within the field that allow PTs to continually broaden their knowledge and expertise. For example, PTs can specialize in areas such as neurorehabilitation, aquatic therapy, and pediatrics.

Pediatric physical therapy, in particular, appeals to me as someone interested in working with children while also gaining a deeper understanding of how adults function. Working with children requires a unique skill set and approach that can be both challenging and rewarding.

Alternatively, geriatric physical therapy may be a good fit for those seeking a more relaxed environment. This area of specialization involves working with older adults to improve their physical function, mobility, and overall quality of life. Regardless of the specialty, the opportunity to continually learn and grow as a physical therapist is an aspect of the profession that excites me.

Building Relationships with Patients

Another aspect of physical therapy that I find rewarding is the opportunity to build relationships with patients. Unlike other medical professions that may only see patients briefly, physical therapists often work with patients over an extended period of time. This allows for a deeper understanding of their needs, concerns, and goals, and the chance to establish a bond built on trust and mutual respect.

Through my experiences as a volunteer in physical therapy clinics, I have seen firsthand the difference that a physical therapist can make in someone’s life. For example, I worked with a patient who had suffered a severe stroke and was unable to walk or talk. Through months of physical therapy, she regained her ability to walk and communicate, and her quality of life improved dramatically. Seeing her progress and the positive impact on her life was incredibly rewarding, and it strengthened my desire to pursue a career in physical therapy.

As a physical therapist, you’ll be able to continue helping people in need of your expertise. You will be able to specialize in areas such as orthopedics and sports medicine or work with elderly patients who have arthritis or balance problems. In addition to working with patients in hospitals and clinics, physical therapists may also work in schools where children learn about fitness and nutrition.

Physical therapy is more than just working out and rehabbing injuries. It can involve helping with various issues, including managing pain, improving movement and range of motion, increasing strength, alimentation, and even preventing injury. I believe that physical therapy is a field that will allow me to continue helping others who are in need and make a difference in their lives.

Tips On Writing an Essay About the Reasons Why I Want to Be a Physical Therapist 

Writing a personal statement essay about why you want to become a physical therapist can be challenging, but it’s also an excellent opportunity to showcase your passion and dedication to this field. Here are some tips to help you write an effective essay:

When writing an essay on why you want to become a physical therapist, use clear and simple language so that the reader can understand what you’re saying. Don’t use long sentences or complex words.

Highlight your skills

Physical therapy requires a unique set of skills, including strong communication, empathy, and problem-solving abilities. Highlight how your own skills and experiences have prepared you for this profession.

Show, don’t tell

Don’t just tell the reader that you’re passionate about physical therapy; show them. Use vivid language and specific examples to demonstrate your enthusiasm and commitment to this field.

Connect your personal story to your career goals

In your personal statement essay, it’s important to illustrate how your life experiences and professional aspirations align with your passion for becoming a physical therapist. Use your essay as a platform to articulate how you envision making a positive impact in this field.

Why Someone Might Want to Become a Physical Therapist

Physical therapy is a rewarding career that involves helping patients recover from injuries and illnesses. Physical therapists work closely with patients to develop personalized treatment plans and help them achieve their goals. In this table, we will list the reasons why someone might want to become a physical therapist, along with a description of those reasons.

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Why Become a Physical Therapist

While the first professional physical therapist association was formed in 1921, it was during the 1940s and ’50s that  a nationwide polio epidemic sparked greater demand for physical therapists.  Nearly 80 years later,  physical therapy is ranked by U.S. News & World Report as one of the best jobs in the health care sector.  If you are passionate about helping people rehabilitate from an injury or manage the physical challenges of a health condition, earning a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) degree, and pursuing a career as a physical therapist might be the vocational path for you.

What does a physical therapist do?

Physical Therapists are recognized as experts in the evaluation and treatment of movement dysfunction. Based on their distinctive knowledge and training, physical therapists provide a unique perspective on purposeful, precise, and efficient movement across the lifespan and use movement-related interventions to optimize functional capacity and performance.

Physical therapists work with patients across the lifespan who have chronic conditions, illnesses and injuries, providing rehabilitation and treatment to prevent injury, and optimize their quality of life. They also help patients improve flexibility and strength so they can maintain independent and active lifestyles.

A DPT degree, such as the one offered through the USC Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy,  will prepare a physical therapy professional to work with individuals of all ages who have a variety of conditions such as traumatic injuries, neurological disorders, and job-related injuries. Physical therapists may work in a general practice or in a specialty setting (e.g., sports, pediatrics, geriatrics, hospital care, or wellness and prevention).

Responsibilities of a physical therapist include but are not limited to:

• Working with other health care professionals to provide team-based comprehensive care.
• Assessing and diagnosing a patient’s ability to function and move to engage in daily life.
• Working with patients to develop a plan of care that includes goals for long term success.
• Providing treatment such as patient education, therapeutic exercise, hands-on therapy, and use of special equipment to help patients optimize their mobility, ease pain, prevent further injury, and encourage overall health and wellness.
• Educating patients and their families about what to expect from the recovery process and how to cope with challenges along the path to healing.

Steps to becoming a physical therapist

To become a physical therapist in the United States, you need to earn a Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) degree from a program accredited by the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education (CAPTE), and pass a state licensure exam after graduation. Most DPT programs have requirements such as:

• Earning a bachelor’s degree.
• Having an undergraduate cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher (for competitive programs).
• Taking the GRE or having taken the GRE within the past five years.
• Participating in paid or volunteer experiences in a variety of physical therapy settings (e.g., as a physical therapy aide).
• Completing prerequisite coursework (e.g. in anatomy, physiology, chemistry, and physics) along with the requisite lab credits required by the DPT programs you are applying to.

DPT programs are typically full-time, three-year programs  and require students to take courses including anatomy, physiology, movement science, exercise physiology, clinical patient management, evidence-based practice, and professional ethics. Students also spend extensive hours in clinical experiences under the supervision of physical therapists in their community. When exploring your options, consider the number of clinical hours required in the program. The more clinical hours required, the more hands-on experience you will gain. Additionally, if you wish to specialize — in orthopedics or pediatrics, for example — you may consider applying for a residency or fellowship after graduation.  The American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties  awards certifications recognizing specialization after graduation.

DPT program graduates are eligible to sit for licensure upon graduation  in the state they wish to practice and may be required to take continuing education to maintain their license.

Why get a doctorate in physical therapy?

A DPT degree is required to sit for licensure as a physical therapist. There are many reasons to become a physical therapist:

Baby boomers need DPTs.  There will be a greater demand for physical therapists who can assist older patients in optimizing their quality of life by helping them to manage the physical challenges and illnesses that can come with age. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,  employment for physical therapists is projected to grow 22%,  which is much faster than the average for other occupations.

Technological advances have increased demand for DPTs.  The demand for rehabilitation care is increasing as new technologies lead to greater survival among trauma patients and newborns with health complications.

You can choose the setting that best suits your interests.  Physical therapists have the unique opportunity to work in a variety of settings, including but not limited to schools, hospitals, research settings, collegiate, or professional sports organizations, nursing homes, private practices, large health care organizations, and universities. Physical therapists also work with diverse individuals including older adults, injured workers, athletes, disabled children and adults, and the general population.

Benefits of being a physical therapist

In addition to ranking #20 on  U.S. News & World Report’s “100 Best Jobs” list for 2019,  a career in physical therapy career can be personally rewarding.

“People go into this field because they want to help people get healthy and live better,” said Jody Frost, PT, DPT, PhD, a spokesperson for the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), in  an AARP article about pursuing a career change into the field of physical therapy.  She explained that, unlike other health professions where patient interactions tend to be limited to brief visits, physical therapists get to work with people for weeks and sometimes months, developing real relationships.

Additionally, physical therapists have the opportunity to work autonomously. The APTA indicates that  more than 21% of physical therapists are owners of or partners in their practice.

Where do DPTs work?

Physical therapists held approximately 247,700 jobs in 2018. In 2018, they earned an average salary of $87,930, according to the  U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Physical therapists work in a variety of environments:

• Offices with groups of therapists including physical, occupational, and speech therapists (33%)
• Hospitals, including state, local, and private (26%)
• Home health care services (10%)
• Nursing and residential care facilities (7 %)

As previously mentioned,  employment for physical therapists is projected to grow 22%.  Job prospects are expected to be especially good in acute care hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and orthopedic settings, where many geriatric patients seek care. Physical therapists can work toward supervisory and management roles, participate in academic research, teach, and open their own private practices.

Citation for this content:  USC Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy

Last updated February 2020

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The Curly Clinician - Physical Therapy + Lifestyle

PTCAS: Personal Statement/Essays

December 23, 2017 Physical Therapy , Pre-PT , PTCAS & Planning

Welcome to the last #dptwiththecc post (*cue sad music*)

Today I will discuss PERSONAL STATEMENTS & SUPPLEMENTAL ESSAYS!

What is a personal statement.

Every year, PTCAS has an “essay” section. This is essentially your personal statement, even though it is not stated outright. The personal statement is your chance to really show your personality, so you want to make it count! If your grades or GRE scores aren’t the best, your essays could really set you apart, + take your application to the next level.

The question/prompt will be the same for everyone, and this is updated every few application cycles. Because the PTCAS application opens at the end of June/early July, PTCAS usually releases the prompt for the upcoming cycle on their Twitter and Facebook pages in the spring. This will give you time to start brainstorming and drafting your essay before the application even opens!

Past PTCAS Prompts :

• 2016-2017, 2017-2018 : “What is professionalism in the context of being a student in a doctor of physical therapy program?”
• 2018-2019, 2019-2020 : “Describe a meaningful experience in your life. Reflect on how that experience influenced your personal growth, such as your attitudes or perceptions.”
• 2020-2021 : “Every person has a story that has led them to a career. Since there are a variety of health professions that “help” others, please go beyond your initial interaction or experiences with physical therapy, and share the deeper story that has confirmed your decision to specifically pursue physical therapy as your career.”

In addition to the PTCAS essay, most programs require you to write supplemental essays . These are additional essays that will let the program know a little bit more about you. These essays could be long or short, depending on the program. When I applied, my program had 2 supplemental essays (1150 characters each). One essay asked about a life failure and how I overcame it, and another asked about my experience with diversity.

What should I write about?

Katie from My Road to PT has a GREAT blog, and in her post about essays, she comprised a list of some example topics + questions. They are listed below:

PTCAS Essay

• How have your life experiences shaped who you are?
• What observation experiences can you talk about?
• Are there any patients that have influenced you?
• How has an experience impacted how you want to want to practice physical therapy?
• Who are the most influential people in your life?
• When did you know that you wanted to be a physical therapist?
• When have you been on a team or worked in a group? How was the team approach better than working by yourself?
• Where do you see the field of physical therapy going, and how do you fit into that picture?
• What sort of physical therapist to you see yourself being?
• How would you treat your future patients?
• What dream goals do you have?
• What character traits are important to have as a physical therapist
• What experiences have strengthened those traits for you, or what traits are you currently working on?
• How has your time spent as a patient affected how you will be a physical therapist?
• Are there any specific therapists that you wish to be like, or any therapists that you don’t want to become?
• Why will you be valuable to this profession?
• Are you interested in teaching, research, owning your own business, traveling, working for a nonprofit, or volunteering in another country?

Autobiography Essay

• What challenges have you overcome in your life?
• What are some of your major accomplishments?
• Why do you want to be a physical therapist?
• What things have you done that helped you grow as an individual
• What activities have you participated in?
• Who are some influential people on your life?
• How have your family, friends, or peers shaped who you are today?
• How would other people describe you?
• What 5 words describe you the best?
• What character traits are important for a physical therapist to have? Do you have these traits, or how are you improving them?
• What is important to you?
• How will your experiences make you a successful physical therapy student/physical therapist?
• How did your upbringing shape your personality, and how will that make you a better physical therapist?
• How have your experiences led you to the physical therapy career instead of other health care careers?
• Is there a central theme about your life experiences?
• How can you contribute to the field of physical therapy and your future patients?

Diversity Essay

• Describe your life experience as it is related to your culture.
• Is it hard to understand others who are from a different culture?
• Do you have a culturally different perspective than your peers?
• Does your culture have a different set of health care beliefs, or have you encountered another culture with different beliefs?
• Have you had an experience in life where you felt like your culture created a barrier for you?
• Have you volunteered for an economically disadvantaged population?
• Do you have trouble relating to higher socioeconomic classes?
• Have your experiences helped you relate better to certain people?
• Have you witnessed any social, cultural, or economic barriers when observing in a health care setting?
• How have you learned from any of these experiences?
• How does recognizing, understanding, or appreciating diversity make you a better physical therapist?
• Have you worked with individuals with disabilities?
• How do these experiences support that you will be able to work with diverse patients when you are a physical therapist?

Re-applicant Essay

• Have you retaken any classes?
• Did you retake the GRE?
• Do you have additional observation experiences?
• Did you observe in any new settings or see a different patient population?
• Did you have any additional work experience?
• Where you involved in any groups or team sports?
• Did you volunteer?
• How are you more prepared to be a successful student?
• Have you improved any personal skills?
• Have you worked with individuals that are different or gave you a unique perspective?
• What have you learned and how have you improved?
• How did these new experiences change your perspective, improve your application, change your personality, teach you something new, help you grow, or support your desire to become a physical therapist?

While these specific questions may not be asked, they can be used to brainstorm possible responses/give you an idea of the types of questions to expect.

What should I put in my personal statement?

Why you actually want to become a physical therapist is the number one thing that should be in your essay (duh)! You should also try to have a “theme” (as long as you can somehow relate it to the prompt). This will make your essay cohesive, and interesting to read. Almost everyone wants to be a physical therapist because they want to help people, or because they had an awesome physical therapist when they were injured. While this is great, try to focus on another reason why you want to become a physical therapist. This is a personal statement, so make it personal! For my PTCAS essay, I wrote about the lack of representation in the field for black women, and how I want to help increase the presence of underrepresented populations + treat underserved communities! Really think about WHY you want to help people. What are your passions? Pull from your life experiences (healthcare + non-healthcare related) to make your theme come to life.

In addition, you should extensively research the programs you are applying to before you write your supplemental essays! Read their mission statement, and find out what they value. Are they a research program? Do they really value diversity and inclusion? Are they big on global health? Whatever the program’s values are, include how your personal values align. This will make you stand out, and show that you are a serious applicant. If it is applicable to the prompt, you could also discuss why you want to attend the program that you are applying to!

How long does the personal statement have to be?

PTCAS has a limit of 4500 characters (about 1 page) for your essay. I would recommend using most or all of this space (without adding in irrelevant information of course) if possible. If you can get your point across in fewer characters, then that’s fine too! I wouldn’t stress about the character limit until you feel like you’ve completed most of your essay, as it is easier to take things out at the end. I would recommend drafting your essay in a program like Microsoft Word (or a plain text editor like Notepad), so that you can always see how many characters you’re at. Then, you can just paste the essay into PTCAS later.

Does your academic record accurately reflect your capabilities?

This question will be asked in the PTCAS application, but I wouldn’t answer it unless there was an extenuating circumstance that affected your academics. Admissions committees don’t want to hear excuses for why your grades weren’t as good as you wanted your freshman year (it happens!), or how you spent too much time partying or distracted. As long as your grades improved over time (your transcript will reflect this), you are fine!

General Tips

• ACTUALLY ANSWER THE PROMPT! I know this may seem obvious, but I have edited many essays for pre-PT students, and come across essays that didn’t even answer the prompt. This is a sure-fire way to stop someone from reading your essay, so follow directions, and try not to deviate too far from the prompt.
• Avoid contractions (i.e. don’t, can’t, won’t, etc.). Your essay should be formal.
• Show don’t tell!
• Vary your sentence structure. You want your writing to have style, so don’t make every sentence sound the same.
• Make sure to have an introduction (with a captivating opener to engage the reader), and a conclusion to bring your essay full circle (remember your theme!). I began my essay with a childhood memory, but you could begin with a quote (kinda cliché, but you could make it work), a question, a general idea, or something else. You want to grab the reader’s attention immediately!
• Remember HIPAA! If you want to discuss a patient you observed, don’t include any of their personal information!
• Don’t plagiarize!
• Keep your audience in mind: you never know who the admissions committee is composed of, and everyone may not agree with your views.
• When brainstorming, start by making a list of your thoughts/ideas about the prompt. Later, you can turn these ideas into actual paragraphs.
• Make sure your theme is present in each paragraph.
• Have at least 3-4 people proofread/edit your essays (for content + grammar). Of course, you’re going to think your essay is good, but you need an outside source’s opinion. You may think you’ve conveyed your point, but you’ll never know for sure unless you have someone proofread it. This could be a family member, a friend, a current DPT student, a physical therapist, a professor, etc. The Student Doctor Network Pre-PT Forum has a thread you can visit if you’re looking for someone to edit your essay. I wouldn’t recommend having another pre-PT student edit your essay (unless you know them personally, or really trust them), as there are some not-so-nice people online that could potentially steal your essay. I had my mentor (who is also a physical therapist), a recent DPT grad, and an accepted pre-PT student edit my essays. Try to avoid having too many people edit your essays, as you may lose your “personal” touch.
• Provide lots of examples!
• Don’t rush the process! It takes a while to write a good essay, so allow yourself enough time to do so. You may even have to take a break and come back later with a fresh mind. Regardless, you’ll have that “aha” moment eventually! If you are really stuck, try writing in a different environment (i.e. the library, a coffee shop, or a bookstore). Sometimes a change of scenery is all you need!
• Try reading your essay out loud. It is much easier to catch mistakes this way, versus if you are only reading it in your head.

Thank you so much for tuning in to this series! If you missed any of the posts, be sure to check them out under the “ Pre-PT ” section of the blog! I covered getting organized, grades/study tips, extracurricular activities, observation hours, letters of recommendation, and the GRE! Once it gets closer to the new application cycle, I will definitely have more tips and advice for y’all!

Remember that I am available for editing (PTCAS essay, supplemental essays, and resumes), so click here if that is something you are interested in!

If you have any requests for posts you’d like to see in the future (or ever need anything), feel free to leave a comment, DM me on Instagram , or shoot me an email ( [email protected] )! Can’t wait to continue creating content for you guys!

Reader Interactions

February 24, 2020 at 3:59 am

loved this. Really informative and inspiring. Thank you.

March 3, 2020 at 3:24 pm

You’re so welcome!

July 9, 2020 at 8:21 am

This was very helpful. I felt like I was constructing my essay on a blank canvas, but this article gave me a structural foundation of where to start. Thank you!

July 9, 2020 at 10:24 pm

Ah yay this makes me so happy Brittany! Good luck with the rest of your application girl!

September 19, 2020 at 11:31 am

This blog has helped me through every single step of my PTCAS application process! You’re truly a lifesaver because you give answers to all the little things that everyone asks and but no one really addresses. If i get into PT school, it’ll all be thanks to you!

September 24, 2020 at 3:40 pm

Ahhhh Sara that makes me so happy I am so glad that my blog has been a good resource for you! Good luck with the rest of the application process 🙂

July 24, 2021 at 1:54 pm

Love this! Your blog has been very helpful in my process of submitting apps. I had a question; where did you submit/find any extra supplemental essays?

August 28, 2021 at 12:13 pm

Hi Ashley, I’m so happy to hear this! They would be within the PTCAS application!

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The Ultimate Guide to Writing PT School Application Essays

Here are some pointers for writing essays when you apply to physical therapy school. Please know that there isn’t a single best way to write your essays and everyone will answer each prompt differently, so do what works for you!

Essays are challenging to write, especially without any guidance. I had about 10 revisions of each of the 7 essays I wrote, had several people read them each time, and still had trouble writing some of them.

How to Start Writing Your Essay

1. Organize Your Thoughts

Write down the essay prompt, either on a computer or by hand. Read it a couple times, even out loud, until you have a good idea of what it is asking.

Then write down any thoughts that came to mind. They can be related to the prompt, or you can just write down what you like about the physical therapy profession or any specific experiences that stand out to you.

It doesn’t matter if you’ll actually end up writing about them. Don’t worry about your grammar or if it is written well. Just write down all of your thoughts into bullet points, or just a few words or a sentence for each idea.

If you are having trouble coming up with ideas, there is a section at the end of this post just for you. There are a lot of questions that may help you come up with ideas for your essay, so go check them out!

2. Turn your ideas into paragraphs

Write more about each point that you wrote down. Try to form a paragraph and relate it back to the prompt. If you’re struggling on writing more than a sentence or two about the bullet point, then maybe one of your other ideas will be better to include in your essay.

3. Choose 2-3 things to talk about

Now that you’ve written as much as you can about each bullet point, you should start to see a general direction to keep writing your essay. What are your favorite topics? What ideas can relate to each other to make a cohesive essay? What ideas answer the prompt the best?

4. Form a Complete Essay

Now that you’ve chosen your favorite paragraphs, format them into one essay. Now you can add an introduction paragraph that briefly mentions these paragraphs and your overall topic. Then you can add a conclusion.

5. Edit Your Essay

Now that you have a complete essay, you can read it from beginning to end. If it doesn’t flow well between each paragraph, add some transition sentences. If you don’t answer the prompt very well, rewrite some sentences. Keep editing and rewording until the essay is finished.

How Do You Format Your Essay?

You can format your essay however you like! I recommend that you have an introduction, some body paragraphs, and a conclusion. However, you don’t need your typical “5 paragraph” essay. Some supplemental essays may also have a shorter length, so you might only write two paragraphs.

You can indent each new paragraph, or just put a space between paragraphs instead of indenting, unless the school states that there is a specific way they want you to format your essay.

General Tips for PT School Essays

I know that writing your essays is not as simple as those 5 steps. It can take weeks and be mentally exhausting. However, I’ve included a bunch of tips to help guide you to writing a great essay.

• Be careful what you write about patients. If you choose to write about a patient, don’t include any specific personal information like their name, ethnicity, or occupation, or you will be violating HIPAA. Describing their general age, condition, gender, what setting you observed in, general occupation if it relates to your story, and what interventions were used is perfectly fine.
• Don’t use contractions.  I just did, but that’s besides the point! Contractions are too casual, so avoid them if possible.
• First-person speech.  It’s ok to say “I” and talk in first person. You’re writing about yourself, after all! Just make sure that you vary your sentence structure so that you don’t begin every sentence with “I”. There is never any reason to say “I think” in any sentence. It sounds unprofessional, so just delete it.
• Focus on the positives.  If you had any negative experiences, setbacks, or mistakes, don’t spend too much time writing about them. Explain yourself in a couple sentences, but focus on what you learned and how you’ve bettered yourself. Don’t dwell on the past, but try to focus on the positive results.
• Try to avoid clichés.  Almost everyone can write about how they want to be a physical therapist because they love to help people, or because they got injured and need physical therapy. You can briefly write these things, but you need to have other, more personal experiences that you can write about. Be sure to set yourself apart from others.
• Why have you chosen each school?  For supplemental essays for a specific school, make sure to mention why you want to go to their school, if it fits into the prompt. It’s good to show that you’ve done your research and are excited to attend their program for specific reasons.
• Answer the question.  It’s self-explanatory, but it’s so easy to get caught up in what you’re writing and go in a direction that doesn’t answer the original prompt. Make sure everything that appears in the essay helps to answer the prompt in some way.
• Have others read and edit your essay. Family members, friends, classmates, college writing center, or people on the Student Doctor Network Forums can all help your essay. It’s so beneficial to have an outside perspective on essays, especially because the admissions committee reading your essay won’t read it in the same way that you do. Try to have as many people critique your essay as possible.
• If you ask for help online, don’t post your entire essay for everyone on the internet to read. Make a new thread or comment on a current essay thread, and send an email directly to the person willing to read your essay. There are people that might steal your essay and use it as their own, so be careful who you send it to.
• Take a break from writing. Constantly thinking about your essay, rewriting, and editing is exhausting. It’s helpful to take a few days from working on your essay, and then come back to it with a fresh start.
• Try writing in different environments. I wrote mostly at home, but found that I got stuck with my writing. I started to write at coffee shops, which helped me be more productive. Try working at a library, outside, at a friend’s house, or in a different room in your own house.
• Essays can take weeks to write.  Make sure you start early enough so you aren’t stressed out from trying to meet an upcoming deadline. Start working on your essays as soon as possible.
• Be careful when writing multiple essays.  The PTCAS essay is sent to every school, so don’t copy and paste the same paragraphs into any supplemental essays. However, if two different schools have an essay prompt that is similar, then feel free to similar paragraphs.
• Essays are weighed differently by each school.  Some might not even read the PTCAS essay, others care more about their supplemental essays, or some schools do not care much about a well-written essay.
• Maximum character length.  You don’t have to write 4498 out of 4450 characters for your essay to be great.  Shorter is fine if you can get your point across. Aim for the character maximum, but it’s fine to have several hundred less than that.
• What if you wrote too much?  Worry about the essay length after you have written your thoughts down. When you are finalizing your essay, remove the repetitive information and anything that does not support the prompt, for starters. Then you can try rewording your sentences so they get straight to your point.

Tips for Specific Essays

If you’re stuck with writing your essays, see if you can answer these questions. You don’t need to answer all of them or any of them to write a great essay. A lot of these questions will overlap and be useful on other prompts, so make sure to read through everything if you need help.

Hopefully these questions will get you out of any writers block you may have.

PTCAS Essay

You can find the essay prompt on the PTCAS Essay page , or on their Facebook page once it is released. When I applied in 2014, the essay prompt was released in early June, and the PTCAS application opened in early July. This gave me an entire month to write my essay before I could even start my PTCAS application.

The essay prompt changes every year or every several years, so I can’t give great advice for this. These are some tips from past essays, so hopefully they help.

• How have your life experiences shaped who you are?
• What observation experiences can you talk about?
• Are there any patients that have influenced you?
• How has an experience impacted how you want to want to practice physical therapy?
• Who are the most influential people in your life?
• When did you know that you wanted to be a physical therapist?
• When have you been on a team or worked in a group? How was the team approach better than working by yourself?
• Where do you see the field of physical therapy going, and how do you fit into that picture?
• What sort of physical therapist to you see yourself being?
• How would you treat your future patients?
• What dream goals do you have?
• What character traits are important to have as a physical therapist
• What experiences have strengthened those traits for you, or what traits are you currently working on?
• How has your time spent as a patient affected how you will be a physical therapist?
• Are there any specific therapists that you wish to be like, or any therapists that you don’t want to become?
• Why will you be valuable to this profession?
• Are you interested in teaching, research, owning your own business, traveling, working for a nonprofit, or volunteering in another country?

Autobiography Essay

• What challenges have you overcome in your life?
• What are some of your major accomplishments?
• Why do you want to be a physical therapist?
• What things have you done that helped you grow as an individual
• What activities have you participated in?
• Who are some influential people on your life?
• How have your family, friends, or peers shaped who you are today?
• How would other people describe you?
• What 5 words describe you the best?
• What character traits are important for a physical therapist to have? Do you have these traits, or how are you improving them?
• What is important to you?
• How will your experiences make you a successful physical therapy student/physical therapist?
• How did your upbringing shape your personality, and how will that make you a better physical therapist?
• How have your experiences led you to the physical therapy career instead of other health care careers?
• Is there a central theme about your life experiences?
• How can you contribute to the field of physical therapy and your future patients?

Diversity Essay

• Describe your life experience as it is related to your culture.
• Is it hard to understand others who are from a different culture?
• Do you have a culturally different perspective than your peers?
• Does your culture have a different set of health care beliefs, or have you encountered another culture with different beliefs?
• Have you had an experience in life where you felt like your culture created a barrier for you?
• Have you volunteered for an economically disadvantaged population?
• Do you have trouble relating to higher socioeconomic classes?
• Have your experiences helped you relate better to certain people?
• Have you witnessed any social, cultural, or economic barriers when observing in a health care setting?
• How have you learned from any of these experiences?
• How does recognizing, understanding, or appreciating diversity make you a better physical therapist?
• Have you worked with individuals with disabilities?
• How do these experiences support that you will be able to work with diverse patients when you are a physical therapist?

Reapplicant Essay

• Have you retaken any classes?
• Did you retake the GRE?
• Do you have additional observation experiences?
• Did you observe in any new settings or see a different patient population?
• Did you have any additional work experience?
• Where you involved in any groups or team sports?
• Did you volunteer?
• How are you more prepared to be a successful student?
• Have you improved any personal skills?
• Have you worked with individuals that are different or gave you a unique perspective?
• What have you learned and how have you improved?
• How did these new experiences change your perspective, improve your application, change your personality, taught you something new, made you grow, or support your desire to become a physical therapist?

Does Your Academic Record Accurately Reflect Your Capabilities?

Most people say that you should only answer this section if something major happened in your life that was out of your control, like an illness, personal injury, family emergency, death of a loved one, etc.

Don’t use this area to write a list of excuses for why your grades weren’t as good as you wished. Examples of excuses: Explaining that you weren’t mature enough, didn’t study hard enough, partied too much, took too many difficult classes, or went to a challenging university. Those are excuses because you were responsible and they could have been avoided or handled better. If you are eager to explain yourself, you can try to add a sentence or two into your PTCAS essay.

A lot of people had lower grades at the beginning of their college career, so if your grades improved over time and your transcript shows that, you don’t need to write an essay to explain yourself.  It takes a while to learn how to succeed in college, and admissions committees understand that.

Additional Resources

Unfortunately there isn’t much information about physical therapy school essays. I found these resources for general essay writing, grad school essays, and med school essays, but they’re mostly applicable to physical therapy school too!

PTCAS Essay Prompt Essay Workshop 101 Writing the Personal Statement Personal Statement Before You Write Your Personal Statement, Read This Writing Your Medical School Personal Statement: Tips and Myths Writing the Personal Statement for Medical School

Student Doctor Network Forums:

Supplemental Essays character limit   PTCAS Essay question for 2015-2016 application cycle! Essay   This year’s personal statement prompt? Should I or should I not write about this in my essay? Re-applicant essay Does your personal statement have to be 4500 characters? 

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Pingback: PTCAS: Personal Statement/Essays

The link you set for the reapplicant essay doesn’t lead to that blog post. I wanted to ask if you know if reapplicants should submit the same essays if the essay question is the same this year?

Sorry for taking so long to reply! I just saw your comment this morning.

Thank you for letting me know about the link. Occasionally blogs are taken down, so I’ll have to go through and make sure to remove all the links to that site.

That’s a tough question, and I don’t think there is really a correct answer. If you read the Student Doctor Network forums , you can find others who have run into the same situation. Do you know why you were not accepted the first time around? If you didn’t meet the GPA or GRE requirements, your application may have been automatically disqualified and your essays might have never been read. You can choose to use the same exact essay, but hopefully they haven’t been read by the same program already. You can also choose to edit your essays a little bit, and maybe add any new experiences that you’ve had since you last applied.

Best of luck this application cycle! 🙂

Hi Katie! I’ve been reading your blog for a while now and I really appreciate it!!! I’m just wandering if you know any PT personal essay editing service?

Hey Lauren! Sorry for the delay in my response, and I hope it isn’t too late.

When I was applying to schools, I sent my essays to 3-4 of my friends (including an English major), so I got tons of feedback from them. There’s also the Student Doctor Network forums, and there are DPT students and PTs that offer up their spare time to edit essays! Just be cautious when sending your essay to strangers on the forum – make sure that they have a decent number of posts on that site.

I’m not sure if there is an essay editing service online, specific towards PT admissions essays.

If you need any last minute help, feel free to email me your essay and I can give some comments! Best of luck with getting into schools! 🙂

I’m almost finished with my PTCAS application process and I found this. Super helpful, I’m making some edits to my essay now. Thank you!

You’re welcome! I’m glad I could help! Good luck with applying and everything.

Thank you, that was so helpful!

You’re welcome! Thanks for the nice comment 🙂 glad I was able to help!

How to Prepare for Your First Physical Therapy Session

Here's what PT can do for you, and how to get the most out of therapy.

This article is based on reporting that features expert sources.

How to Prepare for Your First PT Session

If a doctor has told you that physical therapy could help you and you’ve never had it before, you probably have some questions about what to expect from physical therapy.

Getty Images

Physical therapy helps to identify, treat and diagnose movement problems in people of all ages and abilities, says Anita Bemis-Dougherty, vice president of practice at the American Physical Therapy Association.

Conditions That Can Be Helped With Physical Therapy

Physical therapy focuses on the joints and muscles of your body, and is often associated with the treatment of pain from an injury or to aid in post-surgery recovery . However, licensed physical therapists, or those working under them, actually treat a variety of conditions.

Here are just some of the health issues for which physical therapy is used and how it may help:

• Arthritis . Physical therapy can improve mobility in the affected joint or joints.
• Balance problems. The exercises used in physical therapy can help you to improve your balance and strengthen muscles, so you're at a lower risk for falling.
• Broken bones. Physical therapy can help you recover your mobility in the area where you broke a bone.
• Cancer . Physical therapy can assist in regaining strength and speed up healing, particularly after cancer treatments like surgery.
• Chronic headaches . Targeted stretches and massages help chronic headaches, especially tension headaches caused by tight, tense muscles.
• Parkinson's disease and other neurological disorders. Physical therapy helps make it possible to maintain movement even as the disease progresses.
• Pelvic floor problems such as urinary incontinence. With physical therapy, the pelvic floor muscles are strengthened to make it easier to control your bladder.
• Sports injuries . Depending on the sports injury, physical therapy aids in recovery and gets the patient back to their sport of choice.
• Stroke . Assistance with walking, sitting, lying down and going from one motor activity to the next is part of physical therapy for many stroke patients.

Physical therapy is performed by licensed physical therapists and physical therapy assistants. Some physical therapists specialize in certain areas, such as wound management, pediatrics or sports. It’s possible to get physical therapy for chronic conditions, as well as newer, acute problems.

Benefits of Physical Therapy

There are a few benefits associated with physical therapy:

• You can return to doing activities you enjoy that you've stopped because of an injury, pain or surgery, says Chris Tutt, CEO of ProActive Therapy Specialists in Portland, Oregon, and partner with Confluent Health.
• You may prevent future pain and injury.
• You may be able to avoid surgery and the use of prescription drugs. This includes addictive opioid drugs, says Julie Lombardo, founder and CEO of Capitol Physical Therapy in Madison, Wisconsin, and partner with Confluent Health.
• Your physical function, or movement, improves.
• Your ability to move more freely helps you to maintain independence, such as not having to seek help from others when you're standing or walking.

Choosing a Physical Therapist

You may get a referral to physical therapy from a doctor. It’s also possible to seek direct access to physical therapy yourself, although your state laws may have restrictions on how many appointments you can have without a doctor’s referral.

Although many health insurance policies cover physical therapy, check with your policy in advance to find out about coverage. Some may require you to have a doctor’s referral to get your care covered, says Lauren Lobert Frison, a physical therapist and owner of APEX Physical Therapy in Brighton, Michigan.

You can compare physical therapy clinics before starting treatment, and even get a tour if they offer that, to help you find the right clinic for you. When you visit, you can also ask how many patients are treated by a physical therapist at one time. It’s common to treat a couple of patients within the same hour, but you’ll get better care if the therapist limits how many patients are seen at one time, Lobert Frison says.

Your first physical therapy appointment will probably go a little more smoothly if you take a few minutes to prepare for it. Here are some tips to prepare.

• In the days leading up to your appointment, make a note of any symptoms you have related to the reason for your physical therapy. Some questions to consider : What makes your pain or physical problem worse? What makes it better? Can you describe the pain? Is the pain worse at a certain time of day or during certain activities?
• If you can, complete any paperwork in advance, advises physical therapist John Reddon of Teton Therapy in Riverton, Wyoming. If your first session is an hour and you need 15 minutes to complete your paperwork, you’re cutting into time for the therapist to get to know more about your problem.
• Bring a list of any medications that you use, including supplements and over-the-counter treatments . This is valuable for the physical therapist to review. Also, bring your photo ID and insurance card.
• If you have imaging results related to your injury or problem, such as X-rays, bring them with you.
• Wear comfortable clothing so you can move around and so the physical therapist can touch the treatment area. Shorts, sweatpants or shirts you can easily move around in are best. This isn’t the time to wear your skin-tight blue jeans, Reddon says.

What to Expect During Your First Physical Therapy Session

Your first session of physical therapy is an initial evaluation to help the physical therapist get to know you and your problem better. This will typically take place in a private area of the clinic, not the open setting with equipment and tables that’s common in many physical therapy offices.

During the evaluation, expect your physical therapist to ask about your condition, medical history and current symptoms, Lobert Frison says.

Common tests that a physical therapist will use during the initial evaluation include:

• Flexibility .
• Range of motion.
• Strength testing.
• Walking, such as looking at your posture and gait when you walk.

All of this gives the physical therapist information to come up with an effective treatment plan. If there’s extra time, you may start some treatment during your initial appointment. Your therapist also may give you exercises you can do at home, such as stretches that target your area of concern.

Follow-Up Appointments

Some people expect their physical therapy sessions to just be exercises they do for the full treatment time, Reddon says. However, that's not usually the case. Don’t expect to just do an hour’s worth of exercises as you dive deeper into physical therapy, Reddon says .

As the physical therapy clinic’s staff start your actual treatment, there’s a wide range of treatments and techniques they'll use to help you feel better. Those treatments and techniques include:

• Customized exercises that target your area of concern and help to improve function and reduce pain.
• Education on proper body and posture mechanics. This helps you learn how to place less stress on your muscles and joint structures so you avoid future injury, Tutt says. This can include learning better ways to lift or bend forward, for example. Education also may include making physical changes outside of physical therapy. For instance, you may discuss how to set up the desk in your office for better ergonomics.
• Electrical stimulation, ultrasound, and other modalities that can help to improve circulation and reduce pain.
• Heat or ice used on your treatment area.
• Muscle stretching.
• Soft tissue mobilization, a hands-on technique where the therapist will work with your muscles and the tissues around them. A therapist may use a handheld instrument to help treat the muscles when performing soft tissue mobilization.
• Trigger point dry needling, which involves the use of thin, dry needles used through the skin into areas of muscle to help relieve tension and reduce pain, Lombardo explains.

It’s not uncommon for physical therapy clinics to schedule several appointments each week – usually two to three appointments – for you when you initially start treatment. There are a few reasons for this. More frequent appointments help you to get better, quicker. They also give the physical therapist a chance to target any new irritation that’s occurred to the treatment area in the previous few days, Reddon says. The actual number of appointments you need will depend on your exact needs, but a general range is 8 to 14 appointments total for non-surgical conditions and 20 visits for post-surgical conditions, Lombardo says. It’s also possible to have a session every couple of months if you’ve recovered from a problem and just need some reinforcement to reach or maintain your goals, Tutt says.

3 Tips to Get the Most Out of Physical Therapy

With the time, and perhaps financial commitment, involved with your physical therapy, you’ll want to do everything you can to get the most out of your sessions. Here are a few tips to maximize your physical therapy:

• Keep your appointments. Frequent physical therapy sessions can be challenging from a scheduling standpoint, but those more frequent appointments aim to get you better, faster. In the end, more frequent appointments can save you on the cost and headaches of a new surgery or medication.
• Do your homework. You may not get a grade for this type of homework, but you’ll still get the end result of better physical function. Follow the home practice your physical therapist recommends as best as you can.
• Understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. This helps you “buy in” to your physical therapy, Reddon says. This will motivate you more to stick with your therapy.

Staying Active in a Cast

The U.S. News Health team delivers accurate information about health, nutrition and fitness, as well as in-depth medical condition guides. All of our stories rely on multiple, independent sources and experts in the field, such as medical doctors and licensed nutritionists. To learn more about how we keep our content accurate and trustworthy, read our  editorial guidelines .

Bemis-Dougherty is vice president of practice at the American Physical Therapy Association.

Lobert Frison is a physical therapist and owner of APEX Physical Therapy in Brighton, Michigan.

Lombardo is founder and CEO of Capitol Physical Therapy in Madison, Wisconsin, and partner with Confluent Health.

Reddon is a physical therapist with Teton Therapy in Riverton, Wyoming.

Tutt is CEO with ProActive Therapy Specialists in Portland, Oregon, and partner with Confluent Health.

Tags: physical therapy , muscle problems , sports medicine

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86 Physical Therapy Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best physical therapy topic ideas & essay examples, ⭐ simple & easy physical therapy essay titles, 👍 good essay topics on physical therapy, ❓ physical therapy research questions.

• The Relationship Between Physical Therapist and Physical Therapist Assistant Conversely, the training offered to the PTA’s enables them to provide care, support, and physical handling of clients under a management strategy developed by the PT.
• Legal and Ethical Responsibilities of Physical Therapists In the recent past, as a result of the increased autonomy of physical therapists in executing their duties, there has been an increase in the number of ethical and legal responsibilities of individuals in this […] We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• The Career of a Physical Therapist The cost of attaining a degree in Physical therapy at the University of Delaware is estimated to be about 9,486 dollars for the in-state tuition fee and 23,186 for the out-of-state.
• Negligence in Physical Therapy Even if the therapist owed a duty to the patient and acted outside the standard of care, the plaintiff still has to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the action of the therapist caused an […]
• Physical Therapy Activities The justification for conducting this particular research was premised on the fact that relatively few studies had attempted to evaluate and address the relationship between physical therapy treatments and outcomes by specifically investigating the individual […]
• ACL Surgery Physical Therapy Plan Resistance training can be incorporated into the exercise program to help build strength and improve stability in the knee. Working with a physical therapist with knowledge of ACL rehabilitation is necessary to guarantee the program’s […]
• The Education of Physical Therapy Students In the era of COVID-19, many students were forced to study online, and this type of learner has become one of the most popular in the medical sphere.
• Aspects of Geriatric Physical Therapy The authors of the study evaluated secondary data and presented the interconnections of an essential chain of mechanisms reflection on training processes such as enzymes, neurotransmitters, and ion channels positively influencing the cardiovascular system, cardiorespiratory […]
• Job Opportunities for a Physical Therapist Assistant Since a range of health issues and disorders are addressed in the specified settings, the assistance of a qualified PTA is likely to be quite welcome in a rehabilitation center.
• Physical Therapy: Orthopedic Chairs Proposal Being aware of the fact that the received orthopedic chairs are out-of-date and out of service for necessary repair, I have to inform healthcare staff about the shortages of new products, and our administrator is […]
• Funds to Set Up Physical Therapy and Rehabilitative Medicine Department There is a current need to evaluate the provision of physical therapy in society today, taking into consideration the number of people who need therapy, and the people with actual access to the service.
• Arthritis: The Use of Physical and Occupational Therapy Incorporating credible evidence, the paper expounds on biological factors such as unusual bowel permeability, genetic and microorganism as the causes of arthritis The paper examines the use of physical and occupational therapy, as some of […]
• Paraplegia: Normative Model for Physical Therapy Education Adjustment to the way of life and the budget is likely to follow in order for the family to cope with the paraplegic condition.
• Analysis of the Physical Therapy Market For this reason, it is possible to admit the existence of a significant business potential related to the development of the MBE Ltd.
• Physical Education: Effect of Phototherapy Therefore, it is evident that the intensity of an exercise directly influences one’s heart rate, breathing rate, skin coloration, sweating, and recovery.
• Careers in the Health Professions: Physical Therapy The organization is the sole accreditation agency in the United States with regard to education in Physical Therapy. He is married with two children and is undergoing computer course in the hope of landing a […]
• Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy in Parkinson’s Disease Hypotension is an “abnormal condition in which the blood pressure is not adequate for normal perfusion and oxygenation of the tissues”.
• Medicine Issues: Physical Therapy as a Profession The aim of this essay is to discuss the profession of physical therapist explaining the role of women in this field.”Physical therapy in the United States was originally an occupation composed almost entirely of women; […]
• The Career of a Physical Therapist Assistant The career of a physical therapist assistant is exciting, flexible, and highly rewarding, but students require necessary qualifications to join the profession.
• Physical Therapy: Overweight or Obese People With Osteoarthritis The abstract is a comprehensive summary of all the components of an article. Analyzed results are found in the results section of the article.
• Physical Therapy in Canada and Thai Research indicates that the advancement of technology in medical field has also provided the need for physiotherapy in the field of health.
• Dealing With Patient Resistance in Physical Therapy
• Physical Therapy in Gynecological Practice
• Good Physical Therapy as an Alternative to Drugs in Pain Management
• Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation: Use in Physical Therapy
• Application of Physical Therapy in Urology
• Discrimination in the Private Physical Therapy Practices
• Exploring the Theory of Expert Practice in Physical Therapy
• Evidence-Informed Physical Therapy of the Musculoskeletal System
• Physical Therapy for Athletes
• Experimental Methods of Physical Therapy Effects on the Human Body
• Code of Ethics of the American Physical Therapy Association
• Treatment Methods Used in Physical Therapy
• Contraindications and Restrictions for Physical Therapy
• Robotic Rehabilitation for Physical Therapy
• The Possibility of Reducing the Dose of the Drug Through Physical Therapy
• Physical Therapy After Triangular Fibrocartilage Injuries and Ulnar Wrist Pain
• Pulsed Radio Frequency Energy as Physical Therapy
• The American Physical Therapy Association
• The Effectiveness of Physical Therapy
• Positive and Negative Side Effects of Physical Therapy
• Advantages of Modern Physical Therapy
• Physical Therapy and Acquired Brain Injury Patients
• Methods of Physical Therapy in the Treatment of Diseases of Various Systems and Organs
• Physical Therapy: The Pharmacological Aspect of Musculoskeletal Systems
• Physical Therapy in Gynecology for the Recovery and Treatment of the Body
• Physical Therapy for Pain Relief
• Contraindications to the Use of Physical Therapy Methods for Treatment
• Post-stroke Balance Rehabilitation of Multilevel Physical Therapy
• The Influence of Physical Therapy on the Human Body
• Viewing the Practice of Physical Therapy From a Professional’s Perspective
• Patient Satisfaction With Physical Therapy
• Accelerating the Achievement of Desired Treatment Results With Physical Therapy
• The Appointment of Physical Therapy for a Certain Range of Indications
• Physical Therapy for Neurological Conditions in Geriatric Populations
• Physical Therapy for Becoming a Licensed Physical Therapist
• Combination of Physical Therapy With Other Therapies
• Effective Methods of Treatment Using Technologies Close to Physical Therapy
• The Downsides and Benefits of an Effective Physical Therapy
• Physical Therapy for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder
• What Does Physical Therapy Mean?
• What Is the Main Focus of Physical Therapy?
• What Are the Types of Physical Therapy?
• What Are Things Physical Therapist Do?
• What Usually Happens at Physical Therapy?
• Who Benefits From Physical Therapy?
• Why Do Patients Go to Physical Therapy?
• Why Do Doctors Recommend Physical Therapy?
• Does Physical Therapy Really Help?
• Can Physical Therapy Harm a Person’s Health?
• How Long Does Physical Therapy Last?
• Should a Person Immediately Go to Physical Therapy if There Is Pain?
• Is Physical Therapy Painful at First?
• Does a Person Need to Go to Physical Therapy Often?
• What Happens to a Person When They First Visit a Physiotherapist?
• How Does Medical Terminology Relate to Physical Therapy?
• How Physical Therapy Has a Positive Impact on Patient’s Disease, Deformity, or Injury?
• How Can Clinical Decision Making for a Physical Therapy Assistant Help?
• What Happens After Physical Therapy Is Done?
• What Clothing Should People Wear to Physical Therapy Appointments?
• What Can Not Be Done Before the Medical Examination?
• Should People Take Painkillers Before Physical Therapy?
• What Time of Day Is Best for Physical Therapy?
• Is a Physical Therapist Better Than a Chiropractor?
• How Does Physiotherapy Work?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "86 Physical Therapy Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/physical-therapy-essay-topics/.

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• Curr Rev Musculoskelet Med
• v.13(2); 2020 Apr

How New Technology Is Improving Physical Therapy

Johnny g owens.

1 Owens Recovery Science, San Antonio, TX USA

Michelle R Rauzi

2 University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Aurora, CO USA

Andrew Kittelson

Jeremy graber, michael j bade.

3 Veterans Affairs Geriatric Research, Education, and Clinical Center, VA Eastern Colorado Healthcare System, Aurora, CO USA

Julia Johnson

4 Sports Medicine Division, United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, Colorado Springs, CO USA

5 US Coalition for the Prevention of Illness and Injury in Sport, Colorado Springs, CO USA

Dustin Nabhan

Purpose of review.

As rehabilitation patient volume across the age spectrum increases and reimbursement rates decrease, clinicians are forced to produce favorable outcomes with limited resources and time. The purpose of this review is to highlight new technologies being utilized to improve standardization and outcomes for patients rehabilitating orthopedic injuries ranging from sports medicine to trauma to joint arthroplasty.

Recent Findings

A proliferation of new technologies in rehabilitation has recently occurred with the hope of improved outcomes, better patient compliance and safety, and return to athletic performance. These include technologies applied directly to the patient such as exoskeletons and instrumented insoles to extrinsic applications such as biofeedback and personalized reference charts. Well-structured randomized trials are ongoing centered around the efficacy and safety of these new technologies to help guide clinical necessity and appropriate application.

We present a range of new technologies that may assist a diverse population of orthopedic conditions. Many of these interventions are already supported by level 1 evidence and appear safe and feasible for most clinical settings.

Introduction

The steady increase in the burden of musculoskeletal injury conditions in the USA has brought focus on the high rates of disability, chronic pain, and reduced quality of life when patient outcomes are below optimal [ 1 ]. The overall aging of the population and longer life expectancy will drive more patients to seek medical care to improve age-related musculoskeletal decline and injury. This burden is not isolated to the aging population, but across the lifespan of individuals who suffer high and low energy orthopedic trauma from sports, work, combat, and everyday life.

Through advancements in technology, post-injury rehabilitation is leveraging the ability to push the envelope in hopes of an expedited recovery, standardization of treatments, closer discharge to prior injury status, and reduced disability. The aim of this paper is to highlight new technology currently being used in Physical Therapy for orthopedic conditions ranging from sports medicine to joint arthroplasty to trauma.

Blood Flow Restriction Rehabilitation

During the quiescent period of recovery from injury or surgery, patients are susceptible to rapid and significant losses in muscle strength and size [ 2 , 3 ]. Current guidelines recommend lifting moderate to heavy resistance exercise loads, 65–70% 1 repetition maximum (1RM) to create a physiological response for muscle adaptation and slow the loss of muscle during periods of disuse [ 4 ]. Often, post-operative restrictions and pain curb the clinical population’s ability to handle these recommended loads. This creates a paradox for rehabilitation professionals who try to limit disuse atrophy and restore muscle quantity and quality when constrained to low-loads. Blood flow restriction (BFR) rehabilitation has recently gained in popularity in the clinical setting via the ability to achieve similar benefits as high load training while using loads below 30% 1RM.

The application of BFR requires applying a tourniquet cuff, similar to a surgical tourniquet, to the proximal thigh or arm to reduce arterial inflow while completely occluding venous return (Fig.  1 ). By combining BFR with low-load exercises increases in muscle size and strength similar to heavy-load training have been demonstrated [ 5 ••, 6 ]. Although BFR is low-load, it is high volume with most exercise prescriptions requiring 75 repetitions. Current guidelines suggest personalization of the cuff pressure to each individual may help prevent injury and improve standardization and efficacy of treatments [ 7 •]. This personalization is often termed limb occlusion pressure (LOP) or arterial occlusion pressure (AOP) in the current literature. Personalization is achieved through BFR systems with built-in doppler like technology or via hand-held doppler measurements [ 8 , 9 ]. Although the amount of restriction pressure needed to maximize effectiveness and safety is still under investigation, recent research suggests that in the lower extremity 60% limb occlusion pressure may be the minimum effective dose to achieve a response with pressure up to 80% possibly augmenting the response [ 10 ]. As the ability to tolerate load decreases, then the applied occlusion pressure may need to increase. This may be important in clinical settings where patients may not tolerate even 20% of 1RM; in this case, up to 80% LOP in the lower extremities may be required to reach similar adaptations as heavy-load training [ 11 ].

Patient performing blood flow restriction rehabilitation

Systematic reviews and meta-analysis have demonstrated the effectiveness of BFR in healthy, clinical, and elderly populations [ 7 •, 12 , 13 ]. Although the exact mechanisms behind BFR and muscle adaptation are still not fully understood, several theories have been presented. One prevailing hypothesis is the recruitment of larger, fast-twitch motor units during the hypoxic state created by the tourniquet. This, in turn, creates a muscle metabolite milieu that signals downstream anabolic signaling including increases in muscle protein synthesis, myonuclei, growth hormone, and muscle and bone gene expression [ 14 – 16 ].

Although relatively new and novel in the clinical setting, the overall safety of blood flow restriction has been studied in both healthy and clinical populations with minimal side-effects [ 17 ]. The majority of published and ongoing clinical trials have focused on sports medicine injuries; however, total joint, limb salvage, and muscle wasting disease populations have been studied without adverse events and with positive results [ 18 – 20 ]. Although BFR research has focused primarily on muscle adaptations, recent studies have demonstrated the ability of BFR to improve tendon stiffness and tendon cross-sectional area similar to heavy-load training and reducing bone loss after ACL surgery [ 21 , 22 •]. Ongoing and future trials will help identify which diagnoses are the most appropriate for BFR and establish best practice guidelines for early use of BFR, LOP, and dosing protocols post-surgery to maximize the response. Since the majority of orthopedic patients experience periods of disuse from injury or surgery, BFR appears to be a promising new technique to mitigate the loss of muscle that has historically been an accepted consequence of injury.

Exoskeletons for High Energy Lower Extremity Trauma

The decision to amputate or salvage a limb after high energy lower extremity trauma (HELET) remains controversial. Factors such as patient-perceived expectations, surgeon preference, and conflicting published trials have made consistent guidelines difficult to establish. Although the LEAP study found no difference in functional outcomes at 2 and 7 years between open-tibia fractures who went on to limb salvage or amputation, a subsequent military study, METALS, reported overall improved functional outcomes in service members who elected amputation over limb salvage [ 23 , 24 ]. The disparity in the results of these studies may be in large part due to the higher physical fitness and functional expectations in the younger and more active military population. In turn, this could lead to a loss of self-efficacy in the limb salvage military cohort from the inability to perform military tasks such as running.

With increasing numbers of service members undergoing limb salvage during Operation Iraqi and Enduring Freedom, more robust and aggressive rehabilitation programs began to develop to accommodate the prolonged circular ring fixation phase [ 25 ]. Unfortunately, the loss of plantarflexion force and pain that persisted despite bone union left the majority of the limb salvage patients unable to stay on active duty [ 26 ]. To combat this, a custom energy-storing carbon fiber ankle-foot orthosis called the intrepid dynamic exoskeletal orthosis (IDEO) was developed. The IDEO utilizes a foot-plate with a rollover design to allow engagement from heel strike to toe-off to load posterior struts that simulate plantarflexion torque (Fig.  2 ). Additionally, minimal ankle and foot range of motion is allowed in the IDEO which helps reduce pain from sources like post-traumatic osteoarthritis. This allows individuals to tolerate high impact activities and if higher-level tasks such as running are desired then applying more force through the mid-foot of the device increases the strut loading with a subsequent increase in power [ 27 , 28 ]. To aid service members in the utilization and optimization of higher-level function in the IDEO, a specialized rehabilitation program called the Return to Run (RTR) Clinical Pathway has been developed [ 29 ]. The combination of IDEO and RTR has led to reduced delayed amputation rates, improved self-reported scores, improved validated performance outcomes, and improved return-to-duty-rates. Furthermore, the results appear translatable across multiple military institutions [ 30 ••]. Although overall adoption outside the military setting has been slow, partly due to reimbursement rates, there has been a recent rise in civilian medical centers and prosthetic companies adopting an exoskeleton type device coupled with aggressive rehabilitation.

Intrepid dynamic exoskeletal orthosis (IDEO)

Force Plates

Force plates measure force production over time, providing insight into the kinetics of functional movement. Force plate manufacturers have produced affordable hardware and clinician-friendly software solutions that analyze and report kinetic performance with dual plates in real-time. We use functional testing batteries with bilateral comparison of kinetic performance in the clinical setting. These protocols take only a few minutes and can be analyzed without the assistance of a biomechanist. Applications include baseline kinetic profiling, a monitoring tool and outcome measure during rehabilitation, and to assess athletes’ response to training.

Dual force plates can assess each limb’s ground-based movements or can be used individually for single-leg movements. The most studied test batteries include the squat jump, counter-movement jump, and mid-thigh high pull [ 31 – 33 ]. These provide reproducible performance metrics well suited for profiling and monitoring purposes [ 34 ••].

The force-time curve is compared with the kinematics of the athlete to quantify force application during specific phases of the movement (see Fig.  3 ). Phase specific metrics are used to profile performance kinetics. During rehabilitation, deficits in kinetic performance are identified via a comparison of force during bilateral tasks [ 35 , 36 ]. Video or motion capture synchronization allows the clinician to determine if deficits are specific to contraction type or joint position. These deficits are targeted in rehabilitation or training plans and monitored as outcome measures.

Force-time curve obtained from dual force plates during a counter-movement jump reveals asymmetry in force production during the propulsion phase of the jump

Our understanding of the relationship between dual force plate performance and musculoskeletal health is rapidly evolving. Asymmetry in force production appears to be a risk factor for subsequent injury in some sport populations [ 37 ]. However, asymmetries are likely task-specific and may be normal in sports that are not bilateral in nature [ 38 ••]. There is a growing body of literature describing normative symmetry in specific sport populations that can be used to guide clinical decisions [ 38 ••]. As force plates are used more broadly in clinical and research settings, we expect to learn how an individual’s force profile affects their future musculoskeletal injury risk and ability to perform in sport.

Motion Capture and Video Biofeedback

Video motion capture tools are now freely available to the general public. Smartphone-based applications leverage high speed video and machine learning algorithms to create biomechanical models that can be used in real time. The size and price of IMU sensors, comprised of accelerometers, gyroscopes, and even GPS, now allows for accurate 3-dimensional motion capture to be performed in the clinic or on the field. Early clinical use of this technology was limited to periodic screening of standardized movements. However, we are now able to use these technologies to quantify and visualize real-time movement during rehabilitation exercises. By involving the patient in this live analysis of their movement, this technology can be used as biofeedback.

Real-time video or motion capture biofeedback increases a patient’s awareness of their movement signature. Patients can interact with live motion capture displays to modify or correct their movement based on clinician cues. We have found that displaying graphical summaries of movement, such as bar charts for range of motion, provide patients with simple targets to achieve during rehabilitation exercises (see Fig.  4 ). For example, we may instrument a patient with IMU’s and show them a monitor with graphs of bilateral knee extension during treadmill walking. Instead of providing internal cues, the therapist asks the patient to strive for symmetry of the injured and non-injured knee from the graphical display. Early research on biofeedback shows greater effects in motor learning than conventional physical therapy [ 39 ].

Gait biofeedback

Musculoskeletal Ultrasound in Soft Tissue Injury

Ultrasound is an ideal musculoskeletal imaging modality in the outpatient setting due to its high resolution, non-invasive nature, low cost, and ready availability [ 40 ]. Traditionally considered a diagnostic tool, advances in technology have led to new applications with potential to guide loading prescription during rehabilitation of soft tissue injuries [ 41 ]. We can now visualize soft tissue healing, quantify muscle architecture, and evaluate changes in muscle stiffness and density. These innovations are changing the way we understand muscle recovery from injury—an important development that will improve clinical decision making.

Ultrasound can visualize the location and severity of soft tissue lesions (see Fig.  5 ). Because ultrasound is low-cost modality and does not use ionizing radiation, it can be used as a periodic assessment tool. The phases of soft tissue healing can be monitored and classified, including changes in anatomy and vascular activity around the injury. Although still experimental, there are ultrasound criteria-based protocols guiding return to activity after injury that are being tested in sports medicine settings [ 41 ].

High frequency ultrasound of rectus femoris showing injury at 2 weeks (top) and healing 6 weeks (bottom) after a myofascial strain of the rectus femoris. From: Aubry S, Nueffer J-P, Tanter M, et al. Viscoelasticity in Achilles tendonopathy: quantitative assessment by using real-time shear-wave elastography. Radiology 2014; 274:821–829

A muscle’s capacity to create and absorb force largely depends on its architecture. Muscle architecture is defined by shape, thickness, fascicle length, and pennation angle [ 42 ]. By assessing these characteristics, we can determine if a muscle’s morphology is appropriate for the mechanical demands placed on it during sport with reliable validity [ 43 ]. For example, shorter biceps femoris long head fascicle length is associated with increased risk of hamstring strain. This is a modifiable risk factor that can be changed with just a few weeks of eccentric exercise [ 44 ]. These findings suggest that there is a role for ultrasound as a screening and monitoring tool for patients at risk of muscle strain.

Ultrasound technology has been developed that allows the clinician to quantify the elasticity and functional recovery of a tissue [ 45 ]. This application spawns from cancer research, where density can be used to differentiate abnormal soft tissues masses from surrounding normal anatomy. In musculoskeletal medicine, these techniques could be used to provide valuable information on tissue health and load-bearing capacity, such as identifying stiffness in shoulder capsules in overhead throwers, or loss of stiffness in Achilles tendinopathy [ 46 , 47 ]. As this technology evolves, we expect it to have a place in the outpatient clinical setting as a diagnostic and load management decision-making tool.

Instrumented Insoles: Use of Real-time Feedback to Improve Patient Outcomes

Recent advances in instrumented insoles have enabled clinicians and researchers to access kinetic and spatiotemporal data formerly confined to biomechanical laboratories in the clinical or free-living environment. Instrumented insoles such as the Novel Loadsol (Novel.de) are available at low cost, capable of providing data in real-time to an Android or iOS device, and can provide numerous forms of biofeedback (haptic, auditory, and visual) to users. This technology has been utilized to improve movement quality, increase lower limb loading, improve adherence to weight-bearing restrictions, and beneficially alter gait mechanics.

Compensatory movement patterns are common following lower extremity orthopedic surgeries. Multiple studies have noted persistent compensatory movement patterns for years following unilateral total knee arthroplasty (TKA) during functional tasks including sit to stand, gait, and stair navigation [ 48 – 53 ].

These compensatory movement patterns are characterized by disuse of the surgical limb, resulting in smaller knee extension moments which contribute to persistent quadriceps weakness and poor physical function [ 54 – 56 ]. Additionally, the greatest predictor of movement compensations 1 month following unilateral TKA was the presence of compensations preoperatively [ 55 ]. Collectively, these findings suggest that compensatory motor patterns are learned prior to surgery and do not respond to impairment-based rehabilitation. In addition, compensatory movement patterns may be linked to progression of knee osteoarthritis (OA) and subsequent TKA in the non-surgical limb due to increased loading on the non-surgical knee. Therefore, there is a need for improved post-operative rehabilitation using motor learning principles, which may be combined with instrumented insoles.

Retraining compensatory movement patterns requires successful motor learning. Successful motor learning requires frequent and random practice which is not feasible in many clinical settings [ 57 ]. While biofeedback has been used in laboratory and rehabilitation settings to improve movement quality, these interventions have been limited due to low practice volume and feedback during a small number of tasks in a highly controlled environment [ 58 , 59 •, 60 ]. Instrumented insoles provide a means of assessing movement quality during a variety of activities occurring in real life environments using varying feedback schedules for optimal motor learning. The authors (MR, MB) are currently conducting a randomized controlled trial ( {"type":"clinical-trial","attrs":{"text":"NCT03325062","term_id":"NCT03325062"}} NCT03325062 ) using instrumented insoles to provide real-time feedback in combination with motor learning principles to improve movement quality following unilateral TKA. Pilot data informing this study showed that this intervention improved movement quality during functional tasks 6 months post-operatively [ 61 ].

Instrumented insoles have also been used to facilitate improved limb loading in the early post-operative period as well as improved adherence to weight-bearing restrictions. In a non-randomized trial by Raaben et al., individuals without weight-bearing restrictions following lower extremity surgery were trained to increase loading of their involved limb during gait [ 62 ]. They showed improvements to 63% weight-bearing when receiving real-time feedback. This same group of researchers is expanding their work to a multicenter randomized controlled trial involving elderly individuals following proximal femoral fracture [ 63 ]. Conversely, weight-bearing restrictions are common following surgery, and most individuals, especially older adults, are unable to maintain weight-bearing restrictions [ 64 , 65 ]. In order to improve adherence, instrumented insoles have been used to provide real-time feedback to train correct weight-bearing resulting in short-term success but limited carry-over at longer-term follow-up [ 63 , 66 , 67 ]. Future studies need to consider how to improve sustainability of training to facilitate learning. Both applications have potential to improve patient outcomes and inform post-operative protocols.

Finally, instrumented insoles have also been used to retrain maladaptive gait patterns. For example, increased lateral pressure of the foot during stance increases knee adduction moments (KAM) which have been positively correlated with severity and progression of knee OA [ 68 , 69 ]. Three feasibility studies have examined the use of insoles with audio and haptic real-time feedback to alter foot mechanics by medializing plantar pressure [ 70 , 71 •, 72 ]. In these studies, individuals were successful in achieving short-term changes in gait parameters resulting in reduced KAM. These techniques have yet to be used in larger scale randomized trials or with individuals experiencing lower extremity pathology.

Future research utilizing instrumented insoles will most likely expand into additional orthopedic populations that typically demonstrate compensatory movement patterns, such as after lower limb amputation, or those that require specific weight-bearing protocols, such as after lower extremity fracture, to help improve outcomes in these populations. These technologies may also improve remote monitoring which has implications for improving physical activity, recognizing function decline earlier, and tracking falls.

Patient-centered Care in Total Joint Arthroplasty: Tools for Personalized Care Before and After Surgery

Increasingly, patient-centered care is gaining traction in medicine due to its association with improved health outcomes, patient satisfaction, and reduced healthcare costs [ 73 , 74 ]. The exchange of information between patient and provider is a key component of patient-centered care [ 75 ]. Particularly within the field of elective orthopedic surgery, this exchange is particularly important to ensure that decisions align with the patient’s preferences, needs, and values [ 76 ]. Recent survey data suggests that patients considering TKA desire information regarding their projected outcome after surgery [ 77 – 79 ]. Despite the fact that total joint arthroplasty (TJA) is widely considered an effective surgery, it can be challenging to accurately predict outcomes and recovery for individuals within such a heterogeneous population [ 80 ]. Therefore, there is a growing need for the creation of patient-specific information regarding outcomes and recovery in the field of TJA and other elective orthopedic surgeries.

Within the field of TJA, several tools have been developed for use before surgery to help clinicians provide more patient-specific care by utilizing patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). The Arthroplasty Candidacy Help Engine (ACHE) tool utilizes regression modeling with common PROMs to determine a patient’s likelihood of having a successful outcome after TJA [ 81 ]. Similarly, utilized logistic regression modeling can create predictive algorithms for PROMs and the likelihood of residual symptoms during common functional activities after TKA [ 82 ]. Despite the fact that PROMs are validated measures of recovery, it is important to acknowledge their potential limitations for monitoring recovery after surgery [ 83 ]. PROMs may fail to capture a patient’s initial functional decline after surgery and have been associated more strongly with pain than objective measures of functional performance in TJA recovery [ 84 – 87 ]. It has also been suggested that PROMs are not sensitive to the risk of adverse events, which could allow risks for arthrofibrosis or infection to go undetected [ 88 ].

In contrast to the recent increase in tools for personalized care before TJA, clinicians have few tools available to provide patients with individualized recovery monitoring. Existing tools such as the Risk Assessment and Predictor Tool (RAPT) and others have been validated to predict discharge location after TJA [ 89 , 90 ]. However, there are currently no tools available to our knowledge that allow clinicians to accurately monitor recovery throughout rehabilitation at the level of the individual patient. This is particularly problematic as patients have identified lack of information regarding their course of recovery as a source of anxiety and potential barrier to the decision to undertake surgery [ 91 , 92 ]. Some patients recovering from TKA have also reported the information they receive about post-operative recovery is either insufficient or incongruent with their actual experience [ 93 ].

Personalized Reference Charts: a Novel Tool for Personalized Care

Recently, a “people-like-me” approach has been suggested as a promising new mechanism for providing patient-specific medical care [ 94 ]. This approach matches individual patients with similar patients from historical data and utilizes the recovery data from these historical patients to create a personalized estimate of the recovery trajectory for the individual [ 95 ]. This “people-like-me” methodology has been proposed as a useful tool for informing patient expectations and post-operative monitoring in patients recovering from orthopedic surgery [ 96 ••]. Personalized reference charts (PRCs) are created using “curve matching” which has been utilized to improve the predictive capability of pediatric growth charts [ 95 ]. Just as growth charts can be used to predict and monitor an infant’s growth based on the historical data of similar children, PRCs can be used to predict and monitor patient outcomes based on the recovery data of previous similar patients.

Preliminary work has consisted of creating PRCs for outcome measures which are meaningful in TKA recovery and commonly collected in clinical practice. Knee range of motion (ROM) and timed up and go (TUG) provide a readily apparent example of how PRCs can inform patient-centered care. Consider a hypothetical patient who presents to physical therapy shortly after TKA. She is anxious about her recovery and unsure if she is on track for a successful outcome. Her physical therapist could utilize PRCs at her initial evaluation to compare her current status to her predicted status at this point in her recovery. In this example, she currently has knee flexion ROM greater than 82% of “people-like-her” and is predicted with substantial certainty to attain a functional level of motion. However, her TUG time, which is a validated measure for monitoring physical function in TJA, is slower than 75% of her peers [ 97 ] (Fig.  6 ).This information could allow her to create a plan of care with her physical therapist that is specific to her individual needs and emphasizes strength and balance (to improve TUG performance) over knee ROM. Additionally, these PRCs could be used to monitor the effectiveness of her plan of care. If she returns to physical therapy several weeks later and demonstrates both a TUG time and knee ROM superior to the median in her PRCs, it provides her the necessary information and the opportunity to discuss the possibility of reduced frequency of care or discharge with her physical therapist (Fig.  7 ). PRCs could also be used by the surgical team as a screening tool for referral to physical therapy or to determine when additional intervention may be required for a successful recovery (e.g., manipulation under anesthesia). Conceivably, all of these strategies provide the opportunity for improved cost-effectiveness in care after TKA.

PRCs for patient at 18 days after TKA. Values below zero on the x-axis indicate preoperative measures. At 18 days post-surgery, the patient’s knee flexion ROM is greater than 82% of similar patients. At 18 days post-surgery, the patient’s TUG time is slower than 75% of similar patients

PRCs demonstrating a follow up visit 14 days later. The patient’s flexion ROM is still above the median while her TUG time has improved significantly compared to similar patients with TKA. At 32 days post-surgery, the patient’s knee flexion ROM is greater than 55% of similar patients. At 32 days post-surgery, the patient’s TUG time is faster than 70% of similar patients

PRCs with a “people-like-me” approach has the potential to improve patient-centered care, increase efficiency of care, and facilitate superior outcomes for patients recovering from TKA. Our early work suggests that PRCs are precise and accurate, but the strategy for successful implementation into clinical practice is ongoing.

We live in an age of rapid technology advancements and it is expected that a flood of new technologies will be introduced within the rehabilitation space. To justify the associated monetary cost of new technologies, clinicians will need to turn to well-structured randomized clinical trials to determine the need to adopt. Fortunately, the technologies in this manuscript have already shown promise in published trials or have well-structured trials ongoing. This may serve as a template for other new technologies to avoid the lure of marketing noise and rely more on evidence-based claims.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Michelle Rauzi, Andrew Kittleson, Michael Bade, Julia Johnson, and Dustin Nabhan declare no conflict of interest. Johnny Owens is a paid research consultant for the Major Extremity Trauma Research Consortium and receives royalties from Delfi Medical Innovations, INC.

All reported studies/experiments with human or animal subjects performed by the authors have been previously published and complied with all applicable ethical standards (including the Helsinki declaration and its amendments, institutional/national research committee standards, and international/national/institutional guidelines).

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Additional informed consent was obtained from all individual participants for whom identifying information is included in this article.

This article is part of the Topical Collection on The Use of Technology in Orthopaedic Surgery—Intraoperative and Post-Operative Management

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Why I Chose Physical Therapy

"as a listener, a team player, and an aspiring physical therapist, i want to help others regain their momentum and make tangible differences on the community. ".

A shock of excruciating pain radiated from my knee to my upper thigh. My basketball teammates called for help, but when the school nurse arrived, she confirmed my fears.

“You tore your ACL.”

Chinese characters translate to "success"

I remember crying harder than I had ever cried before. As my high school’s basketball team captain, my coach and I had led my team to two regional championships and expected to compete in a third one . For months I had challenged myself and my teammates to run faster, lift heavier, and shoot more accurately, but after my injury, my coach placed me on the sidelines and revoked my position as team captain.

Blaming fate for prematurely ending my basketball career, I became blinded by my own suffering. Absorbed by self-pity, I struggled with adapting to this new lifestyle; however, after beginning my physical therapy, I noticed that people at the clinic shared both my physical and emotional pain. From amputees to stroke victims, the patients suffered from disabilities that also prevented them from enjoying tasks they loved; for me, my passion was basketball, but to others it was singing or swimming. Feeling a sense of empathy and camaraderie, we cheered each other on with encouragement and optimism. As we each reached our incremental goals and conquered our pain through a team effort, I recognized the shallowness of my self-centered worries and discovered the gratification in helping others surpass life’s obstacles. Motivated with a newfound interest in service, I decided to apply the values I acquired on the basketball court to a clinical and non-profit setting.

         After regaining my ability to walk, I coordinated a service trip to Gawad Kalinga, an organization in the Philippines that builds houses for the poor. During my stay in the Philippines, I met Nina, the 11-year-old daughter of my host family. One night, Nina and I left the house for a stroll, but our light-hearted exchanges turned into a serious conversation about the hardships her family had endured. She told me about her alcoholic father and sickly mother, but not once did she resent her situation or curse her unwelcomed fate. Instead, Nina’s conviction to end domestic violence and restore her broken family fortified my desire to support the underserved community. Seeing that her strength and courage conquered even the most trying obstacles, I recognized Nina’s pain as a universal condition and wanted to equip others with a strong will to overcome their predicaments. I realized that inspiring stories are ubiquitous around me. No matter how different, how educated or uneducated, how poor or how rich others are, they have something valuable to teach me, just as I have something to share with them. It is only a matter of if I look and through what mindset I perceive.

After returning to Taiwan, I continued to explore my curiosity for service by applying my rehab experience to the basketball team setting. Recognizing the need for a therapist on the team, I helped my teammates tape limbs and retrieve ice packs while demonstrating a warm-up routine to prevent possible injuries. As my teammates came to rely on my assistance, I realized how important knowledge of physical therapy benefitted my friends and my team. While my basketball career ended abruptly, my passion for physical therapy was just beginning.

After entering Northwestern University, I expanded my physical therapy skill sets by interning at an outpatient clinic in Evanston. From operating biomedical equipment to leading recovery workouts, I developed technical and analytical skills that improved my abilities to be detail oriented and resourceful. Recalling my experiences as an ACL patient and as a volunteer at Gawad Kalinga, I understood that patients often found therapy unanticipated and emotionally tolling. By empathizing with the patients’ frustration and encouraging them through genuine conversations, I addressed the clients’ emotional state as well as their physical needs. After volunteering in the clinic, I realized that a career in physical therapy would not only embrace my love for athletics, but also serve as a channel to empower others with motivation and encouragement. 

As a listener, a team player, and an aspiring physical therapist, I want to help others regain their momentum and make tangible differences on the community. Even as I write this essay, I sense in myself profound excitement as I begin my career in physical therapy this September. 

Jonathan Tsay

Jonathan is a senior at Northwestern University studying Mathematics and Physical Therapy. He aims to create a global platform that dispatches passionate physical therapists to areas of high need. Jonathan is interested in manual therapy to one day inspire others with hands and words.

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Article Contents

Knowledge claims and knowledge use in physical therapist practice, use of narrative as a teaching and reasoning tool, learning for practice: educational examples.

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Power and Promise of Narrative for Advancing Physical Therapist Education and Practice

All authors provided concept/idea/project design and writing. Dr Greenfield provided project management.

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Bruce H. Greenfield, Gail M. Jensen, Clare M. Delany, Elizabeth Mostrom, Mary Knab, Ann Jampel, Power and Promise of Narrative for Advancing Physical Therapist Education and Practice, Physical Therapy , Volume 95, Issue 6, 1 June 2015, Pages 924–933, https://doi.org/10.2522/ptj.20140085

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This perspective article provides a justification for and an overview of the use of narrative as a pedagogical tool for educators to help physical therapist students, residents, and clinicians develop skills of reflection and reflexivity in clinical practice. The use of narratives is a pedagogical approach that provides a reflective and interpretive framework for analyzing and making sense of texts, stories, and other experiences within learning environments. This article describes reflection as a well-established method to support critical analysis of clinical experiences; to assist in uncovering different perspectives of patients, families, and health care professionals involved in patient care; and to broaden the epistemological basis (ie, sources of knowledge) for clinical practice. The article begins by examining how phronetic (ie, practical and contextual) knowledge and ethical knowledge are used in physical therapy to contribute to evidence-based practice. Narrative is explored as a source of phronetic and ethical knowledge that is complementary but irreducible to traditional objective and empirical knowledge—the type of clinical knowledge that forms the basis of scientific training. The central premise is that writing narratives is a cognitive skill that should be learned and practiced to develop critical reflection for expert practice. The article weaves theory with practical application and strategies to foster narrative in education and practice. The final section of the article describes the authors' experiences with examples of integrating the tools of narrative into an educational program, into physical therapist residency programs, and into a clinical practice.

Over the past several decades, the physical therapy profession has strongly emphasized rigorous application of scientific method where positivist notions of objectivity, reliability, and validity are highly valued methods of knowledge and practice. 1 – 3 One consequence of developing research-informed boundaries of clinical knowledge is increasing clarity about what is missing from this knowledge base, 4 such as research and education that focuses on psychosocial (environmental and personal) factors influencing patient care and experience. 5 – 11

Strategies to integrate psychosocial and patient-centered approaches to physical therapist practice and education include the use of high-fidelity simulation, standardized patients, and expansion and early integration of clinical practice experiences. 12 Although patient simulations capture more realistic patient-provider interactions, the traditional clinical case framework underpinning this approach is often based on a technical, rational, and deductive approach to evaluation and population-based evidence in support of interventions and standardized outcome measures. 13 Expanding clinical placement opportunities exposes students to a range of patients and contexts, but this alone may not guarantee students' development of broad-based competence, just as being in a health care environment does not guarantee learning. In the dynamic and sometimes uncertain clinical practice environment, students often find it difficult to make sense of their encounters and interactions with patients. 4 , 6

Accordingly, there is a need to provide pedagogical tools to purposefully advance a student's learning and insights into the qualitative aspects of his or her practice. The use of narrative is one pedagogical approach that provides an interpretive framework for analyzing and making sense of texts, stories, and other experiences within learning environments. Narrative works to construct a story of an experience to promote a deeper and more coherent understanding of clinical experiences. 13 – 18 Narrative enables students and clinicians to reflect on a case from multiple perspectives, including their own. A narrative begins by identifying a setting—the location and time in which the story takes place—within which the narrator introduces characters. It proceeds with one or more episodes, in which characters act in particular ways toward particular ends, and concludes with some indication of how the episodes coalesce into one story. Highlighting context, characters, and plots allows a narrative to carry meaning, to potentially counter a reliance on objective measures of practice, and to build a bridge or create dialectic that connects the objective and subjective in clinical practice experience to help therapists iteratively move between these 2 essential aspects of human experience.

The use of narrative is strongly grounded in the 2 core concepts of reflection and reflexivity. As both a descriptive and interpretive process, reflection has been defined in several different ways ( Tab. 1 ). 19 – 30 As a framework for interpreting practice, learners use reflection to concretely describe an experience and examine the issues of concern to clarify meaning. Clarification and probing of meaning are done by the learner individually, with a mentor, or in a community of other learners. Reflection is particularly useful to critically probe students' and clinicians' metacognitive skills (ie, thinking about their thinking) to explore the thinking process behind a clinical decision. In this way, the aim of reflection is designed to be transformative—aiming for new levels of understanding, meaning, and insights about clinical care.

Key Characteristics of Reflection

Reflexivity is linked to reflective practice. However, reflexivity focuses on awareness of how students' and clinicians' values and beliefs interact with others and influence their perspectives and behaviors. 29 – 31 Reflexivity, therefore, helps students and clinicians recognize any personal and professional biases that influence their decision making in a clinical encounter.

In this article, we highlight how the use of narrative as a pedagogical tool may enhance physical therapists' capacities to expand their thinking, clinical reasoning, and understanding of practice. We suggest that narrative is a pedagogical tool that can work to facilitate therapists' ability to move from a positivist paradigm to a more reflective and context-based understanding of their own professional practice and their patients' unique circumstances and contexts. We also argue that including the use of narratives in practice and education has the potential to transform approaches to the development and application of professional knowledge. 4 The specific purposes of this article are: (1) to examine conceptions of professional knowledge and its application in physical therapist reasoning and practice, (2) to discuss the use of narrative as a pedagogical tool for broadening these fundamental tenets and processes of clinical reasoning, and (3) to highlight some educational and clinical examples of using narrative to engage student learning and to improve clinical practice.

[T]he conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients…. By individual clinical expertise we mean the proficiency and judgment that individual clinicians acquire through clinical experience and clinical practice…in more thoughtful identification and compassionate use of individual patients' predicaments. 33(p71)

The second type of knowledge is phronetic knowledge (ie, knowledge in action, procedural knowledge, praxis knowledge, tacit knowledge). 12 , 32 Phronetic knowledge integrates evidence-based practice knowledge, requiring judgment and experience. Clinicians using phronetic knowledge or reasoning consider the context of care and the practical issues that affect care. Included in this type of knowledge is an understanding of the psychosocial issues that influence care, including cultural, socioeconomic, psychological, and familial issues that affect decision making. Expert clinicians apply this type of knowledge so that they can understand how, why, and when it is best to use a particular intervention for a patient in a particular situation. Studies have demonstrated how expert clinicians integrate different types of knowledge and clinical reasoning, including deductive, inductive, and narrative reasoning. 35 – 38 Phronetic knowledge results from the ability to reflect-in-action. According to Schön, 6 a practitioner who reflects-in-action is able to make immediate adjustments and modifications as required during treatment. Because reflection and action occur simultaneously, it may not be apparent to the expert clinician or the student watching the experts thinking in action, unless, as in the example below, an experience is reflected on and written about later.

Joe is alone, resting…. As we are talking and beginning to evaluate his movement and sensation, it is apparent that he is having more difficult breathing, and his cough is congested and ineffective. I decided it is more important to address his pulmonary system and begin to assess his ventilation. Speaking with Joe's nurse and the medical fellow in the ICU [intensive care unit], we discuss his tenuous respiratory status and the need to clear his secretions with blind endotracheal suction…. I anticipate that this may be required for a few days.

I have treated many patients with spinal cord injuries over my years as a physical therapist. Earlier in my career, I could perform the skills necessary to gather information, construct a plan for treatment, provide good care, and assess discharge needs, but I am sure that I did not consider so carefully the psychosocial impact of such [a] life-altering injury. [My] greater skill learned was listening, because without listening, I would not know what patients and their families were ready to hear. There will be patients and families who are just too overwhelmed by injury…those who take much longer to grieve for the loss of one's future before they can embrace a new future…. I know I need to be prepared and be flexible and adjust my approach to meet patients' and families' needs.

Narrative has received considerable attention as a powerful tool for reflecting on practice in a range of health professions, including nursing, 13 , 16 medicine, 42 – 51 occupational therapy, 52 psychology, 14 , 18 and physical therapy. 53 , 54 Because narratives encourage students to broadly interpret their clinical experiences as they tell a story, a narrative about clinical practice works to integrate technical and rational knowledge with phronetic and ethical knowledge in clinical care. 4 Narrative tools assist therapists in clinical reasoning and in interpreting their practice by “getting the inside out” 14(p36) to better understand the lived experience and sense-making of their patients' and their own experiences. 55

In the 1980s, the noted educational psychologist Jerome Bruner was one of the first to advocate for narrative ways of knowing. 14 Bruner observed that, unlike analytical thinking, narrative thinking brings different insights and meanings to the intense social interactions that often constitute patient care. He argued that narrative without analysis is naive and analysis without narrative is meaningless because the essence of narrative knowing is to frame and link human interactions into a plot or a story line. The story line provides a temporal structure to understand human experiences by linking individual events to a larger whole. Creating stories either through writing or talking about experiences requires reflection-on-action, a process Schön 6 described as instrumental in acquiring the practical knowledge central to professional practice.

For Bruner, 14 narrative thinking was particularly powerful for understanding the human condition because when constructing a story or hearing a story, we are able to uncover and explore the situated action of the actor or agent, intention or a goal, events, and the cultural surround of that action. At the same time that we construct the story, we should probe for what Bruner referred to as the “inner landscape”—what those involved know, think, or feel or do not know, think, or feel.

Rita Charon 26 is best known as a pioneer in teaching medical students and residents in the narrative skills of recognizing, absorbing, interpreting, and understanding the value of the stories of illness. For Charon, the roots of reflection are seeded in the narrative dialogue between the patient and the health care professional, and its meaning is constructed and conveyed through language. In her teaching, she uses a system of parallel charting to write first-person stories about her experiences with selected patients. Charon suggests there is much more to a person's illness story than can be captured on a traditional medical chart. What is particularly problematic for health professionals trained in a largely biomedical model of medicine is to understand a patient's personal illness script related to their disease or injury. Charon describes how narrative medicine provides the clinician an opportunity to listen carefully to and reflect upon a patient's experiences with illness, representing that experience in a story or narrative, and ultimately providing the clinician insights that foster a strong commitment in caring for that patient. These ideas are particularly relevant for physical therapist practice, where therapists form close bonds with their patients and depend on their patients' cooperation and active engagement in their rehabilitation. In the section that follows, we provide guidelines for integrating reflective narratives into physical therapy curriculum.

Jensen 4 astutely observed that physical therapists are drawn to their profession because they like to get things done; they like to motivate and help people. However, they generally do not want to engage in deep philosophical conversations and epistemological discussions. An initial goal of introducing narrative, therefore, is to demonstrate how narrative can be meaningful and relevant to physical therapy practitioners. The following section describes the authors' experiences with integrating the tools of narrative into an educational program, into physical therapist residency programs, and into a clinical practice.

Integration of Narrative in Physical Therapist Education and Clinical Practice

Based on our experiences with students and clinicians, writing narratives is a skill that needs to be taught, learned, and practiced in the same way that problem solving and other forms of clinical reasoning require practice and explicit instruction. Delany and Molloy 30 describe both horizontal and vertical integration (within and across curriculum) of reflective writing in their physical therapy curriculum in an Australian context. Students are introduced to underlying theory and principles of reflection and methods for writing narratives. During the first 2 years of their physical therapy curriculum, students are given critical reflection writing assignments to identify learning incidents from practical classes, personal lectures, or case-based learning groups and to reflect on the influence of those learning experiences and on their own personal knowledge and assumptions about practice knowledge claims ( Tab. 2 ). During their clinical experiences, students are given narrative prompts to write reflexively, increasing their awareness of how their own values and beliefs interconnect with other perspectives and with the social and environmental contexts ( Tab. 3 ). 29 , 30

Narrative Prompts for Reflective Writing

Narrative Prompts to Facilitate Reflexive Writing

At Emory University in the United States, narrative experiences are similarly developed and integrated throughout the curriculum. Students are introduced to the narrative approach to ethical decision making during their first semester, with an emphasis on the idea that ethical issues are embedded in the experiences of everyday life and are represented in the story of the characters, events, and ordering of events. Students practice analyzing cases to identify “narrative gaps” in the story, including the perspectives of other stakeholders. There is a particular focus on learning what questions need to be asked and answered to provide additional information and insight. During their second semester, students practice narrative writing about their classroom experiences and are prompted with guiding questions for critical reflection and narrative writing ( Tab. 4 ). Narrative prompts work to provide students with targeted questions for not only finding the right answers but also identifying and exploring the uncertainty or ambiguity of a situation. 55

Integrated Narrative Experiences Across Curriculum

In both of these examples of teaching, narrative models are used to facilitate deeper levels of reflection. 56 – 59 For example, Gibbs' model 56 provides students with the framework to move from describing their experience (using a first-person account) to describing their thoughts and feelings as the experience unfolds. At Emory University, students are encouraged to write narratives guided by prompt questions from Gibbs' model during their initial 2-week clinical experiences and during their first 10-week clinical internships ( Tab. 4 ). Students are asked to follow the 6 circular phases of Gibbs' model. The first 2 phases encourage them to describe their experience using first-person accounts. Students are asked to place themselves into the action and avoid using abstraction to describe what occurred, using concrete examples instead. These phases are followed by evaluative phases (where they judge the value and meaning of the experience and discuss their thoughts and feeling in response to the experience). The final phases involve analysis of what went right or wrong and finally how they would address a similar situation in the future. Gibbs' model appears to guide students to move between a description of an experience and an explanatory framework that explains its meaning, providing the student increased insight into practice. During their 10-week clinical internships, the students progress to writing 2 reflective narratives—the first after 3 weeks of the clinical experience and the second at the end.

Process of Unbundling

Narrative theory suggests that the meaning of a story or narrative is always co-constructed and exists in the coming together of storyteller and listener (author and reader). Rather than being confident that they know the author's intended meaning, readers bring their own meaning-making ability to bear in understanding what the narrative means to them. According to Shulman, 55 narratives are second-order experiences—the interpretation of the first-order experience (the actual case or event). In the written narrative, the first co-construction of meaning occurs between the clinician who experienced the situation and, through the benefit of time and language, the same clinician who reflects on that experience and writes the story. Narratives also invite third-order experiences—additional layers of interpretation and meaning making. Through their sharing, narratives afford the opportunity to engage in collaborative, rather than individualistic, reflection. A structure is provided within which students and clinicians can work together to develop a shared meaning of an experience. The eFigure (available at ptjournal.apta.org ) illustrates the progression and interconnection of how shared meaning is created from a writer's original engagement in an experience through personal to group reflection.

In our teaching, we emphasize the primacy of group discussion, deliberation, and debate in the examination of the narrative. The process is dialogic; different members of the group explore different perspectives on the nature of the problem, the available elective actions, or the import of the consequences. Narratives almost always reveal more than the author was aware of or intended to reveal in the telling of the story. 60 , 61 The interaction with a group helps the writer unbundle additional meaning and understanding. Because of this, however, it is critical that the discussion occurs in a safe environment for all involved. An attitude of genuine curiosity about the experience, wanting to understand rather than trying to judge the rightness or wrongness of the author's actions or decisions, helps to create this safe space. 39

At Emory University, we have integrated narrative unbundling activities during the students' short-term and long-term clinical internships (semesters 3, 4, and 5) ( Tab. 4 ). During these initial unbundling activities, students meet in smaller groups and read their narratives to each other. A faculty member guides students to ask probing questions and discussions of each narrative for themes and meaning based on the prompts listed in Table 5 .

Prompts Used to Facilitate Group Discussions About a Narrative

For the students' long-term clinical affiliation, a course was created on the Emory Blackboard educational site. After writing their narratives, students used Blackboard (Blackboard Inc, Washington, DC) to participate in an online group discussion. Groups consisted of 6 or 7 students (from a cohort of 70 students). The purpose of small groups was to facilitate follow-up discussion and ultimately develop a shared meaning of each group member's experience. Each group member uploaded his or her narrative, and the other members provided in-depth responses (1 to 3 paragraphs offering their reflections on the narrative). Group members, including the narrative's author, were asked to pose questions and make comments on others' posts in order to further probe meaning and sharpen understanding of the narrative.

Integrating Narratives Into Residency Program

Based on our experiences of integrating narrative tools to enhance physical therapist students' clinical learning, we have instituted a program of narrative writing for our physical therapy residents at Creighton University and Emory University. The residents were trained in the theory and skills of narrative writing and reflection and were asked to write narratives during their 1-year residency in orthopedics and neurology ( Tab. 4 ). Each student wrote narratives across 3 time placements. As is the case with physical therapist students, our goals of narrative training for residents are to help them develop tools of reflection and reflexivity for expert practice.

Experiences of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)

At MGH, narratives are part of a hospital-based interprofessional development program. 39 As they move through each defined level, clinicians write a first-person description of a clinical experience or situation that was meaningful to them. That narrative is read by one or more department leaders, who meet with the clinician to further discuss and “unbundle” the experience. This process facilitates the therapist's deeper reflection on the meaning of the clinical experience and applications it may have for their practice. For example, questions may be directed to specific words the clinician chose to describe the situation: “You write that the patient interview felt like a ‘battle.’ Tell me more about that.” Or questions may probe thoughts and feeling underlying the written statement: “You describe that you were seeing this patient immediately after they had been given an unexpected prognosis. How did this change your thinking about the session?” The content of these discussions differs from the department's traditional case presentation.

Over time, the use of narrative as a vehicle for reflection and learning from experience has expanded to other role groups. For example, clinical instructors share and discuss narratives of student/patient/clinical instructor interactions related to teaching strategies and student learning challenges. This group unbundling is facilitated by the center coordinators of clinical education, who bring expertise in both narrative interpretation and clinical education. Table 6 provides a summary of narrative experiences across education, residency, and clinical care.

Summary of Experiences Using Narrative Across Professional Education, Residency Program, and Clinical Development Program

Lessons Learned

In summary, we have integrated narratives throughout our curricula, residency programs, and clinical practices. Based on our experiences, we have learned several lessons to effectively help our physical therapist students, residents, and clinicians learn to write and interpret reflective narratives about their clinical experiences.

Not all narratives are created equal; reflective writing is a skill that needs to be taught, learned, and practiced. Writing good narratives requires time and opportunities to develop this skill.

Stories need to be shared; faculty, clinical instructors, and clinical mentors need to create narrative friends and a safe environment for sharing stories. Narrative theory suggests that the meaning of a story is always co-constructed between the storyteller and listener (author and reader).

Reflective narratives can be both a learning process and outcome measures. Narrative provides a powerful tool for educators and clinicians to gain more insight into the thinking of their learners. Recent studies have focused on evaluating narratives for themes and categories and levels of reflection across clinical experiences. 13 , 22 , 30 , 53

There is increasing recognition of the need for greater balance between the humanistic and the technical aspects of physical therapist practice. This increased recognition has contributed to an interest in education methods to promote and help students and clinicians to incorporate the qualitative and quantitative aspects of their practice. In this article, we suggest that narrative methodology is an appropriate pedagogical tool to assist students in exploring their own development and experiences and, most importantly, those of their patients.

In this article, we have highlighted how narrative provides a powerful framework for educators to assist students to engage in reflective and reflexive practice. Narratives and the questions that prompt narrative reflection provide a vehicle for uncovering the broader aspects of a patient's context. They work to support clinical reasoning, which incorporates psychosocial and sociocultural elements of patient care. Importantly, narratives assist in redefining dominant conceptions of what counts as physical therapist practice and expand clinical thinking and practice to include not only the use of epistemic technical knowledge but also the use of phronetic and ethics-based knowledge. We believe such an expansion in knowledge use and reflection is vital for the physical therapy profession to respond to the contextual complexities of clinical practice.

In this article, we have described our strategies with specific examples of integrating narrative experiences throughout different levels of professional education and development. Through our own reflection of the successes and shortcomings of these experiences, we continue to experiment with and modify our approach. We encounter skeptical students and clinicians who need to be convinced that the story is an important construct in the delivery of high-quality, patient-centered care and who need to be reassured that their reflective writing is not assessed according to the stance or viewpoints they take but rather according to their degree of engagement in the process of critical reflection. Our experiences have taught us the importance of incrementally and consistently integrating narrative throughout curriculum and clinical practice. Our challenge is to find ways to see our knowledge generation and construction in its broadest sense with evidence from multiple sources.

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Author notes

Supplementary data.

Process of narrative unbundling.

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Why We Chose to be Physical Therapists

Our physical therapists at OrthoCarolina play a big role in rehabilitation, and PT is an important part of the work we do to help our patients maximize long-term health benefits. It’s is a way for patients to improve movement, manage pain and prevent or recover from injuries or other physical conditions.

Therapists examine each patient, and with them create a treatment plan that over time can help them experience less pain, move more freely, and restore proper function. By teaching individuals how manage their own conditions and injuries, PTs are able to give them more flexibility to continue healing outside of the clinic. Therapists also work on range of motion, balance and posture, strength and coordination, mobility, fitness and obesity, sports injury prevention, enhancing and improving sports performance, manual therapy and body mechanics.

In celebration of October as National Physical Therapy Month, here’s what OrthoCarolina PTs say about why they chose physical therapy as their career:

I love being a PT for those wonderful but rare moments when you relieve a person of a pain or a problem that has been plaguing them for a long time. Maria Zenaida Abanilla

I love being a PT because as the patient undergoes the rehabilitation and recovery process, I get to witness a level of perseverance and will power rarely seen in everyday life. There is great personal reward and joy in knowing that I had a role in seeing the patient’s quality of life and function restored. Susan C. Aiken

I’m a PTA, and I love what I do. This job gives me the ability to educate and empower people about how to be physically aware of their bodies, and in turn improve their overall quality of life. Kathryn Ashworth

I am a PT to see the pure joy on an athlete’s face when they return to their sport for the first time after an injury. Also, the collaboration between different disciplines in efforts to provide the best care for our patients makes teamwork for a common goal very meaningful. Ken Breath

I like the fact that PTs have direct access to patients, allowing us to be independent providers of patient care. Jeffery Cayo

Growing up, I dealt with a fractured spine which could have caused me a lot of limitation with sports and other activities. I was able to work through this to be able to participate in all sports. Because of my experiences, I wanted to be in a field that allowed me to help others overcome adversities, learn, adapt and achieve their goals. Physical Therapy was exactly the field for me. I love working with our team and people to help others overcome and achieve their goals! John DeLucchi

I was very active in sports growing up. I have always been interested in how the human body works, and enjoyed figuring out what I could do to help me get through injuries and improve performance - so PT seemed like a great fit. Chris Gabriel

Physical therapy provides a variety of opportunities in this field to help people recover to their normal or better than normal condition. That makes it all worthwhile. Carol Green

I chose to become a PT to improve the quality of the lives of my patients. Maggie Hanna

I get to spend at least 30 minutes per appointment and see the patient multiple times a week, which allows me time to understand the patient and their condition. Jenni Freie

The human body is like a puzzle and PT’ have to figure out how to get it back together with the pieces being the patients’ needs and expectations, functional limitations, and evidence-based therapy. We are basically engineers without the math. Albert Kaplan

I'm livin' the Dream! Mark Miele

I love being a Physical therapist because I can best use the gifts I have been to increase patients' quality of life and function while glorifying God. Tony Mirovsky

I had always wanted to work in health care. I grew up enjoying a variety of sports and loved outdoor activities such as walking, hiking and gardening. Physical Therapy allows me to help others stay active, participating in the activities that they enjoy. Elizabeth Nichols

My mom was in a car accident when I was 16. I had to drive her to her PT appointments & went back with her. I was so intrigued by what they were doing for my mom that I decided to become a PT. Marie Sardler

The reasons why I chose to become a PT are different than the reason why I love being a PT. I chose to become a PT due to my interest in human anatomy and physiology, exercise and helping people. I love being a PT because it is a platform to glorify the Lord through making an impact in peoples’ lives which brings great joy and satisfaction. Kevin Van Voorhis

I enjoy being a PT because of the variety of patient care settings that you can do therapy. Carolyn E. Wray

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Chapter 3: Literacies across the disciplines

3.4.3 The crucial component of teamwork as a physical therapist (research essay)

Anonymous English 102 Writer

When you think of the profession of Physical Therapy, what are the images or things that you first think of? You probably think of somebody walking a patient through exercises. Maybe you think of the work environment that they practice in. You may also think about what a Physical Therapist would wear for their uniform. These are probably things that most people think about when they hear that profession. Most of these things are very true, but they only scrape the surface of what a Physical Therapist does on a daily basis and the other well-rounded skills they need to succeed. For my final research essay, I will continue to look at my major of Physical Therapy and discuss how the elements in the world of literacy can be translated into a specific career field. There are so many skills used in Physical Therapy that do not just pertain to it specifically, but also skills that are practical in every professional setting. This is what makes this career so unique that you must be a well-rounded individual in general. One of the most significant aspects of this particular career choice is that you have to work really well in a team dynamic. This could be with other Physical Therapists or even different health professionals depending on what setting of practice you are in. In order to work well with other people in your team, not only do you need to understand your job, but you also need to understand what other people’s jobs and roles are. This creates a more cohesive team between the group and translates to more efficiency. This understanding of each other’s roles within a team is called Interprofessional Education (IPE). My final research essay will take a closer look at how IPE is involved in the health field but also looking specifically at how physical therapists are involved within different health settings in the context of IPE.

As I have mentioned before, Pre-Physical Therapy is what I am majoring in and this profession is something that I have known what I have wanted to do for a long time. Obviously, anybody studying Physical Therapy finds interest in how the body moves and works in general, but I find the career much more interesting for many other reasons. One of them is being able to assist people when they are at a time in their lives when they need help. I would of course find that part of the job very rewarding and give me a sense of purpose that I am going to work every day to help change people’s lives. Even though those are major components of why I want to be a Physical Therapist, I still have one major reason that interests me so much. It’s the fact that it is such a specific practice and pertains to a fraction of the medical sciences, yet it can be so applicable to many settings in the field itself and in life in general. It just shows how important it is to take care of our bodies and understanding what you do daily can influence it. Picking this topic allowed me to look deeper into those aspects of the profession and answer questions that myself and many others have about it.

Using these questions presented will allow me to be able to have those answers about Physical Therapy and be able to take a closer look at the profession instead of seeing it at face value. My questions that I will discuss in my essay are “How is literacy involved in Physical Therapy and writing evaluation notes and progress reports?”. A lot of writing goes into being a Physical Therapist because it is their responsibility to make evaluations on the patient and to do that you must be able to correctly write reports. Another question that will be asked is “How does communication between Physical Therapists and Doctors or other medical professionals affect how work is done in practice?”. This goes along with the other question “How is IPE involved with everyday practice for Physical Therapists and for the education of DPT students?”. These both revolve around the idea on how Physical therapists are involved in the health care setting in the context of IPE. My other questions are “How much does communication between the Physical Therapist and the patient affect the relationship between them?”, “Are discourse different in each specific area of practice in Physical Therapy? If so, how are they different?”,  “How does the education in DPT (Doctor Physical Therapy) prepare Physical Therapists for the practice environment?”. Being able to look at Physical Therapy with different perspectives and contexts will lead to a better understanding of what the overall job and purpose is of the career.

Although people do not associate writing with Physical Therapy, it is incredibly significant in the day-to-day practices of a Physical Therapist and is one of the aspects of the profession that people tend to look past when understanding it. A portion of the writing done in Physical Therapy is through writing evaluation assessments for patients. In the article “Physical Therapy Assessment Documentation: 3 Tips & Examples”, the author Tim Fraticelli’s target audience is to other Physical Therapists in the field that may be new to the day-to-day practices. He gives in-depth tips to formatting evaluation notes and other forms of writing that is done in the profession. Fraticelli explains to the reader about how daily notes are supposed to be done and goes into specific detail regarding this topic “You don’t need to write a paragraph for this type of documentation, but being too brief could diminish important aspects of your skilled assessment. Focus on the key elements you worked on in the session. If you targeted balance training, your assessment should reflect  why”  (Fraticelli) .  Fraticelli’s explanations and instruction about drafting these reports and notes on a detailed level show how crucial this part of the profession is. This can allow not only the Physical Therapist themselves to have a better understanding of what is the situation with the patient is, but also other health professionals involved in the patient’s care and how they are able to translate that into their practice.

These reports obviously can be done in many ways depending on what setting the Physical Therapist is in and what the patient’s situation is. This is relevant to the point of how this field in healthcare has a very specific job yet there are many different settings and discourses involved within it. In the article “6 Different types of Physical Therapy” on  Movement for Life Physical Therapy,  it broadly goes over the different areas of focus in Physical Therapy and the certain things that need to be looked at differently when working in that focused setting.

The first type of Physical Therapy the article discusses is in the pediatric setting. The article explains the job of the Physical Therapist in this setting, “Childhood is a time when the body grows very fast, and problems in childhood can have a negative effect on the rest of a person’s life…often teaching them movement types and ranges of movement which they may never have experienced before” (6 Different Types of Physical Therapy 2018). This shows the significance of how working with a certain age demographic, specifically children requires a different type of communication between the Physical Therapist and the patient. Although it is the complete opposite, the next type of Physical Therapy discussed which is Geriatric Physical Therapy has the same principle of working with a particular age demographic and approaching certain situations in different ways. The article explains the specific approach when looking at this particular area of focus “but as we get older, we may notice more problems, as our muscles stop being strong enough to compensate as they have in the past. Geriatric physical therapy is about taking steps to use the muscles you have in a way which is more efficient and safe, and is less likely to lead to injuries” (6 Different Types of Physical Therapy 2018). Comparing the two age demographics, Both Pediatrics and Geriatrics are both learning new movements but in the Geriatric setting, the patients have to relearn the way they move and do something different from what they have been doing their whole lives. This requires a different approach on the Physical Therapists part to look at the situation differently and plan out the care from a different avenue.

The other discourses discussed in this article are less focused on age demographic and more focused on recovery from specific issues with the body. The first type presented is Vestibular Physical Therapy. The article goes into more depth about the focus, “ Vestibular rehabilitation  focuses on helping you to overcome problems of the inner ear which can destroy your balance and be seriously debilitating, including chronic dizziness and  vertigo . Physical therapy can help you to teach your body to have better balance and use its muscles to be steadier and sturdier” (6 Different Types of Physical Therapy 2018). This specfic area of focus in the field of Physical Therapy and the others that will be presented, may require working with several types of Health Professionals that focus on specific health issues. This can be applied to the next discourse of Physical Therapy discussed in this article which is Neurological Physical Therapy. This discourse focuses on caring for patients with issues that have to do with the brain making the body function (6 Different Types of Physical Therapy 2018). It is crucial for the Physical Therapists to be able to communicate with Health Professionals like Neurologists that are working with the patient to supply the most quality and efficient care. This is the same with the next discourse of Orthopedic Physical Therapy. The article talks about the purpose of this type, “Orthopedic  physical therapy  is designed to help you to recover muscle strength, as you might need to after an injury has left you unable to use certain muscles” (6 Different Types of Physical Therapy 2018). Working with orthopedic surgeons and understanding where the patient is coming from in their care is crucial for assessing the situation and making a plan for them. Cardiologists and Health Professionals working specifically with issues of the heart are going to be working with the Physical Therapists in the final discourse of Cardiovascular/Pulmonary Physical Therapy (6 Different Types of Physical Therapy 2018). All of these discourses presented in the article are what a future Physical Therapist or a current Physical Therapist should be familiar with in order to give the patient a quality plan to improve their health.

Not only understanding where the patient is coming from in their healthcare and communicating with other health professionals, but also from there being able to communicate with the patient themselves is as just as important to improving their health and looking at different ways to approach their care. In the article “The Added Value of Therapist Communication on the Effect of Physical Therapy Treatment in Older Adults; a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.”, Sandra Lakke et. al., discusses the effects of communication between the Physical Therapist and the Patient. They specifically wanted to find out if more communication between the patient and the Physical Therapist will increase the patients amount of being physically active (Lakke et. Al. 3). This study was conducted by doing a meta-analysis where they collected multiple studies done to conclude their findings. The journal briefly gives an overall idea of how the study would be conducted, “For the first selection of studies, one researcher (SL) performed an electronic search and screened the titles for potentially relevant studies. Two researchers (SL and MF) screened the abstracts for the second selection” (Lakke et. al. 5). Their conclusions to this study were not necessarily consistent with the hypothesis made. They could not necessarily find a direct correlation between communication of the Physical Therapist and patient to translate to the patient becoming more physically active(Lakke et. al. 12). They were able to conclude that there were changes in physical activity when they used generalization in practice (Lakke et. al. 12). The article goes into more detail regarding this, “When separated in BCT-categories, the only behavior change technique that was effective on older adult’s perceived physical activity was Generalisation of target behavior (i.e., giving confidence and reinforcing transition of exercise to activities of daily living)” (Lakke et. al. 12). The article also gives a recommendation about applying these conclusions into the practice, “it is recommended that physical therapists add behavior change techniques to interventions with older adults when the aim of treatment is to increase self-reported physical activity” (Lakke et. al. 12). This study shows the significance of communication in a general sense with the patient. It represents that being able to provide motivation and give the patient confidence can allow greater success in their recovery by doing exercises on their own.

Building a relationship with the patient is important for Physical Therapists to do in order to improve the quality of treatment. New factors in our world today due to the COVID-19 pandemic can make that part of the job exceedingly difficult for them to do. Becoming more creative about how appointments are carried out so that they are as safe as possible is another element that comes into play when working as a Physical Therapist and in the health field in general. In the article, “Physical Therapist Management of Patients With or Recovering From COVID-19″, the  American Physical Therapy Association  goes over the specifics of the steps that need to be taken when a patient comes to a practice. In the article it says, “All health care providers are at some risk for exposure to COVID-19, whether in the workplace or in the community. Providers in any risk exposure category (high, medium, low, or no risk) who develop signs or symptoms compatible with COVID-19 must contact their established point of contact” ( American Physical Therapy Association).  This is significant because it shows that there is a risk for a Physical Therapist and the patient to be present for an appointment which can make it difficult for the treatment to be carried out on a consistent basis. The article also discusses the certain precautions that the practice needs to take in order to make the experience for the individual going there to be as safe as possible, “Evaluate your treatment and waiting room space design to ensure that patients are always a minimum of six feet apart from one another” ( American Physical Therapy Association).  It also talks about other precautions that need to be taken like cleaning surfaces multiple times throughout the day, taking temperatures, wearing face masks and many other courses of action to ensure safety ( American Physical Therapy Association).  The article also briefly talks about Physical Therapists working in a home health environment and how that is impacted by the pandemic. The article gives the point of making sure the patient is informed that telehealth and virtual visits are available to them if they choose to do so ( American Physical Therapy Association).  The overarching theme of this article is not only relevant to being a Physical Therapists during this time but also being a health professional in general and the obstacles that they face to care for patients. Having to do things differently like being more virtual than having in-person visits with them can affect the relationship that is made between the patient and the Physical Therapists which can become challenging over time.

Being able to build the relationship between the Physical Therapist and the patient requires much more than directly communicating with them but also knowing where they are coming from and who else in the health field cared for them prior. Understanding what the other health professionals are doing to contribute to the care for them and being able to work with those professionals will help you develop a better course of action for the care that you will provide. This recognition and understanding of the jobs in the field other than yours, is Interprofessional Education (IPE). Teamwork is valued in the medical field and IPE is crucial to the success of a Physical Therapist and many others as well. This literal translation of this idea of IPE is expressed in the article “How PT, OT Work Together to Help Memorial Regional Health Patients Heal”, by  memorial regional health.  Even though this article puts this idea into the context of their specific hospital, it still gives a notable example of how it can be applied in the professional setting. In the article it says, “For example, with a hip replacement, a physical therapist works on ambulation, muscle strengthening and balance, while an occupational therapist works on teaching patients how to dress with limited movement, deciding what supportive equipment they need during recovery and adapting their dressing, bathing, toileting and grooming habits during recovery” ( memorial regional health).  This general and basic example gives an example that is easy to understand to people who are not as informed about this certain topic. This also gives us a specific look at how these two professions work together on a daily basis and the similarities and differences between them. The artice also mentions the common goal of the two profeessions, “All therapy disciplines work together to help find the meaning behind the healing process. For example, PTs work on helping a person relearn to walk, and OTs helps the patient return to their daily occupations with as much independence as possible. OTs and PTs write goals together with the patient, as this is the optimal way to achieve success in therapy” ( memorial regional health ). The message that the article is conveying to the audience is that it takes a team to give a patient good care and that the best way for that team to function is to work together. A part of this is to understand what your teammate is doing so you can have a better understanding of what you are doing to contribute to the common goal. These skills are something that every health professional should have, especially Physical Therapists, when entering the medical field.

Because of the high demand for having these IPE skills are very prominent in the health field today, many health professional programs are incorporating education in these skills throughout the curriculum to better prepare the students for the workforce. The journal “Student experiences of interprofessional simulation: findings from a qualitative study” by Margaret Costello et. al. gives an idea to the audience of what DPT (Doctor of Physical Therapy) students think of learning about Interprofessional Education. The study that was conducted asked students to freely express their opinions about what their opinions were of IPE exercises (Costello et. al. 2). The overall theme of the findings in the study were that students supported it. In the article, Costello et. al. Reflects on the feedback from the students, “These feelings indicate that IPS increased stu- dent knowledge of the role of other health professions, and thus may improve their ability to work in an interprofes- sional team” (Costello et. al. 2). The article also discusses the fact that these exercises allow students be more confident in themselves in practice (Costello et. al. 2). This study provides support to the hypothesis that IPE experiences are beneficial for DPT students by presenting overall opinions regarding this subject.

The next sources look at DPT student experiences as well but look at studies regarding specific IPE experiences. In the article “Students’ motivation for interprofessional collaboration after their experience on an IPE ward: A qualitative analysis framed by self-determination theory.”,  Cora LF Visser et. al. conduct a study where multiple health professional students are put in a IPE ward and are to work as a team to care for real patients (Visser et. al. 2). Students were then interviewed on their experiences in the IPE ward and those respeonses were used as the data for this study (Visser et. al. 3). The journal discusses the outcome of the study, “From the ana- lysis of the interviews with the students and the supervisors, we conclude that it was the overall set-up of the IPE ward that enhanced the autonomy, not simply the responsibility or type of supervision (Visser et. al. 7). This shows the significance of these IPE exercises and how they build good teamwork skills for future health professionals. The article also looks at how this study specfically benefited for DPT students, “For the physical therapy students and the pharmacy students: their professional per- spective was relatively unknown to the other students. Being able to add their professional insights in the patient- care meeting added to their feeling of competence and autonomy, because they could offer information rather than wait for the question or consultation” (Visser et. al. 7). Since other health professionals were not as educated in what the Physical Therapy Students jobs were, it shows the importance of having these activities. By doing this, everybody is more educated on what each other’s jobs are so that when they go into a professional environment, they are more prepared.

The article “Does Mode Matter? Perception of Student Competence Following an IPE Communication Experience.” by Sherman, Erica, et al. also looks at a specific IPE experience with Health professional students. In the article they discuss the test that was used for this study, “The Interprofessional Collaborative Competencies Attainment Survey-Revised (ICCAS-R) was used to gather data about students’ perceived competency both before and after the communication activ- ity” (Sherman et. al. 2). This test was used before and after the IPE study was conducted. (Sherman et. al. 2). The results of the study presented an increase in scores for ICCAS-R after the IPE experience in both audio and video setting (Sherman et. al. 4). This study is significant because it shows that just by having one IPE experience, health professional students can gain so much knowledge about the rest of the health field. A common theme between studies is that many health professionals do not fully understand the job of a Physical Therapist. By having more activities throughout all health profession programs, it can allow more students to have knowledge of what a Physical Therapist does so that they can value their input and knowledge when it comes to a real-life practice setting.

There are many diverse components of the career of Physical Therapy and in the context of literacy. Writing is used on a daily basis when making progress reports and evaluation notes. Communication between the Physical therapist and the patient is a crucial factor in the job and can dictate the quality of care for the patient. It is also important to be able to communicate and have knowledge of the other health professionals that you are working with when a patient has a particular health issue. The best way to do this is through interprofessional education and doing activities where the medical professionals are together for a common goal. The foundation of the medical field is teamwork. These professionals have to put themselves aside to work toward the common goal which to give the patient the best care possible. Without communication and understanding the big picture of the job, the result will be inadequate quality. People who choose Physical Therapy are caring, knowledgeable, and are good problem solvers. They can use these qualities in a teamwork setting to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the medical field overall.

Works Cited

Costello, Margaret, et al. “Student experiences of interprofessional simulation: findings from a qualitative study.”  Journal of Interprofessional Care 32.1 (2018): 95-97.

Fraticelli, Tim. “Physical Therapy Assessment Documentation: 3 Tips & Examples”,  PTProgress, https://www.ptprogress.com/therapy-assessment-documentation/

“How PT, OT Work Together to Help Memorial Regional Health Patients Heal”,  memorial regional health,  https://memorialregionalhealth.com/health-topics/primary-care-general-health/pt-ot-work-together-help-memorial-regional-health-patients-heal/

Lakke, Sandra, et al. “The Added Value of Therapist Communication on the Effect of Physical Therapy Treatment in Older Adults; a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.”  Patient Education and Counseling , Jan. 2018.  EBSCOhost , doi:10.1016/j.pec.2018.09.020.

“Physical Therapist Management of Patients With or Recovering From COVID-19″,  American Physical Therapy Association,  https://www.apta.org/patient-care/public-health-population-care/coronavirus/management-of-patients

Sherman, Erica, et al. “Does Mode Matter? Perception of Student Competence Following an IPE Communication Experience.”  Journal of Interprofessional Education & Practice , vol. 21, Dec. 2020.  EBSCOhost , doi:10.1016/j.xjep.2020.100363.

Visser, Cora LF, et al. “Students’ motivation for interprofessional collaboration after their experience on an IPE ward: A qualitative analysis framed by self-determination theory.”  Medical teacher 41.1 (2019): 44-52.

“6 Different Types of Physical Therapy”,  Movement for Life Physical Therapy,  https://www.movementforlife.com/blog/6-different-types-of-physical-therapy.php

Understanding Literacy in Our Lives by Anonymous English 102 Writer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Physical Therapy Essay | Why To Choose Physical Therapy Profession? Importance and Benefits

Physical Therapy Essay: Physical therapy is a profession that will consistently be required all through society; it assists the human body with reconstructing actual capacity in individuals that have been harmed, have birth abandons, or some other reasons. Individuals who have been in mishaps or have handicapping conditions like low-back torment, joint inflammation, coronary illness, breaks, head wounds and cerebral paralysis go to a Physical therapist, normally called PTs, for help. These medical care experts utilize a collection of strategies, called modalities, to restore work, further develop development, soothe torment and stay away from or limit enduring actual handicaps in their patients.

You can read more  Essay Writing  about articles, events, people, sports, technology many more.

Sample Essay on Physical Therapy

A physical therapist is medical care expert that offers restorative types of assistance to their patients who have transitory or constant states of being that were caused by injury or illness. The actual specialist additionally offered remedial types of assistance to patients after they have gone through a medical procedure to assist them with recovering versatility and deal with their aggravation. They can likewise work in preventive consideration by advancing sound ways of life and training singular patients or gatherings on forestalling injury by utilizing practices that stretch and fortify muscles. To help their patients attempt to recuperate they use rub strategies, wellbeing plans, and various kinds of hardware.

At the point when a physical therapist sees a patient for the absolute first time they should do an assessment, assessment, conclusion, and afterward set up an actual intercession to begin the recovery interaction. They additionally fill in collectively with other medical services experts to assist with their patient’s needs. A physical therapist can truly have an effect on their patient’s lives by offering restorative types of assistance as well as empowering and rousing them so they can improve. The fundamental objectives of Physical therapists are to assist their patients in withholding or restore lost actual portability, take out or decrease torment, increment usefulness and assist with advancing a sound way of life so patients can have the superior personal satisfaction and become more autonomous.

The calling of Physical therapy interests me mostly on the grounds that non-intrusive treatment emphatically affects my life and I need to have the option to decidedly affect others. Throughout the long term, I have had something reasonable of wounds and have been lucky enough to have a physical therapist work on me. The way that my physical therapist had the option to limit my aggravation and facilitate my therapy made me amazingly energetic about the calling. Non-intrusive treatment is a fundamental piece of games, which is an enormous piece of my life, and extraordinarily helps the games world.

Without a Physical therapist, wounds would be considerably more adverse and would in this way decline the appeal of contending in a game. Also, I couldn’t imagine anything better than to work in an expert field relating to sports since they to a great extent affect my life and have formed who I am today.

Physical therapy has many advantages outside of sports also, including general active work.

I lead an exceptionally dynamic way of life and can’t envision existence without actual work because of a physical issue, sickness or ailment. By giving rehabilitative consideration to people of all movement levels Physical therapists permit them the opportunity to be truly dynamic. I accept that to make every second count, your body should have the option to take you anyplace you need to go. I can’t think about a preferable calling over valuably affecting others day to day routines and assisting them with partaking in their lives.

Notwithstanding these individual reasons, there are outside factors that additionally make the Physical therapy calling engaging. When you start working, your professional stability increments significantly on the grounds that wounds, ailments and sicknesses will consistently be common in the public eye.

This is exceptionally consoling to experience the harmony of the psyche that you will not be supplanted and it permits you to partake in your work more. Additionally, most Physical therapists work normal hours, which permits you to partake in your time off work and not be stressed over getting brought in. At last, I know numerous individuals that are either physical therapists, facility proprietors, or even still understudies that couldn’t be more joyful with the choice they made to work in the field of non-intrusive treatment.

The advantages of non-intrusive treatment on actual work are huge and crucial for individuals’ wellbeing. By and large, Physical therapy impacts the overall soundness of individuals endlessly. Without physical therapy and rehabilitative consideration, wounds, sicknesses and illnesses could be calamitous to an individual’s actual work level. physical therapists give care that permits people to perform fundamental day-by-day errands and complete activities that work on their personal satisfaction. Notwithstanding broad wellbeing and everyday action, Physical therapy extraordinarily helps sports.

On the off chance that competitors didn’t get care after a physical issue, their recuperating time would increment significantly. By giving particular consideration, physical therapists assist competitors with getting back to play. This, thus, keeps the games business running appropriately as the top competitors can perform and give diversion. Ultimately, non-intrusive treatment benefits active work showing an appropriate structure for movement, which forestalls future wounds. By giving individuals the information important to carry on with actual dynamic life, physical therapists extraordinarily advantage active work.

To have the option to add to the vocation of non-intrusive treatment, I need to first completely get what the calling involves. By social affair however much information as could reasonably be expected about physical therapy, I will have the devices should have been an extraordinary therapist and add to the profession. To emphatically affect physical therapy, I would initially have to rehearse expertly, which considers decidedly non-intrusive treatment in general. I trust it would be amazingly useful to competitors to learn legitimate strategies for proactive tasks. One commitment I would put forth a valiant effort to get going would give a camp to sports groups that teach youthful competitors on structure and injury counteraction.

Conclusion on Physical Therapy Essay

Physical therapists are individuals from a medical care group, uncommonly prepared to further develop development and function, soothe torment, and extend development potential. Through assessment and individualized treatment programs, Physical therapists can both treat existing issues and give preventive medical care to individuals with an assortment of necessities. Physical therapists are entirely learned and talented concerning the human body. Non-intrusive treatment is a complex, however remunerating field to seek after as a vocation. Specialization, working conditions, work viewpoint, compensations, and instruction necessities should be thought about while considering a vocation as a physical therapist.

FAQ’s on Physical Therapy Essay

Question 1. What is physical therapy?

Answer: Physical therapy is a medical treatment that helps you to relieve the pain and function your body parts smoothly. Physical therapy is given by actual specialists who advance, keep up with, or reestablish wellbeing through actual assessment, conclusion, visualization, patient training, actual mediation, restoration, sickness anticipation and wellbeing advancement.

Question 2. Why is physical therapy important?

Answer: Physical therapy will assist you with reinforcing the muscles related to your physical issue just as encompassing muscles. Frequently, strength lopsided characteristics lead to injury. Further, develop results: Physical treatment works on post-careful results, by tending to torment, scar tissue, strength, the scope of movement, and that’s just the beginning.

Question 3. What are the benefits of physical therapy?

Answer: The benefits of physical therapy are:

• Decrease or dispense with pain.
• Keep away from medical procedures.
• Further, develop portability.
• Recuperate from a stroke.
• Recuperate from or forestall a game’s injury.
• Work on your adjust and forestall falls.
• Oversee diabetes and vascular conditions.
• Oversee age-related issues

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