Video:Career Profile of a Physical Therapist

Transcript:Career Profile of a Physical Therapist

Hi. I'm Joann Ferrara, I'm a registered Physical Therapist and I'm here today for About.com and today I'm going to show you what it's like to be a physical therapist.

Role of a Physical Therapist

Physical Therapists are really the experts in musculoskeletal problems. We work on rehabilitating people after an injury, on working with people who are born with a problem, and we also work with people who are well, but just want to stay well and get better in strength or at performing a specific skill.

We work through the life span. From the tiniest babies in the neo-natal up to, probably, your great grandma. Women's health. Tere are orthopedic rehabilitation after surgery and a injury. Neurologic rehabilitation after a stroke. Really physical therapy encompasses anything that has to do with movement or muscles. Most physical therapists at some point decide, they find their passion, they find the area of physical therapy that they love and they want to be in. Be it sports medicine, be it pediatrics, and then, from that point, physical therapists generally take some extra classes to specialize within that area.

A physical therapy degree now is a doctorate level entry. So, what you need is – you need a four year degree, a bachelor's in some field and then it's a three year program post graduate.

You have to be empathetic, secondly you have to be compassionate, and thirdly you have to have a good curiosity. You have to look at a patient and say why is that not working. What can I do to make things better. So, you have to be inquisitive. You have to be willing to go and seek the knowledge so that you can provide the best treatment.

A child, you really have to get down to their level and make it fun and a play time, as opposed to an adult, where you're really quite honestlty focusing on the business at hand of rehabilitation and exercise. A child could care less about, I'm strengthening my quadriceps, they want to know that they're kicking the ball or they're having fun or you're helping them learn to jump rope or ride a bicycle. That you get to help people. You get to see people progress. You get to see someone whose goal was to dance at their daugter's wedding actually accomplish that goal. You get to help little children take their first steps and there's certainly nothing more gratifying then that.

It's physical, hence the name physical therapy. It is physical work. It is hard hard work. You're physically working and you're mentally working with every single person who comes in.

Physical therapists, I would say at this point, start in the fifty to sixty-five thousand dollar range in New York. It's different in other areas of the country. It varies by the setting that you work in. In a private practice you're paid on an hourly basis. I think the going rate is between forty-five and fifty dollars an hour right now.

It's a lot of work to get here, but once you get here it's so rewarding.

Thanks for watching. To learn more, visit us on the web at about.com.