Becoming a physical therapist can be a very rewarding thing both from a financial perspective as well as a psychological and physical perspective. A physical therapist can earn anywhere between $75,000 and $110,000 and has the awesome chance to see people’s lives get change and pains that have been with a person for their entire life be alleviated in minutes. Also helping so many people do so many healthy exercises means that the physical therapist will most often be in an outstanding shape. Still it is a very demanding job and most active therapist today recommend that the first step on how to become a physical therapist should be to shadow a specialist as he does his rounds for a few weeks.
If after doing that you are still convinced that this is a line of work you are interested in you should make sure you can fulfill the legal requirements. There are 212 accredited physical therapy programs of which 12 award master’s degrees and 200 doctoral degrees. The master’s degree last for about 2.5 years while the doctoral ones go for 3 years, however the extra half an year will greatly benefit your reputation. However the implicit requirement in that is a baccalaureate or equivalent diploma that will allow you to access these higher forms of education.
And the fact is that most of them require basic understanding of biology, anatomy, chemistry and ideally psychology. Building upon these pre-requisites the course will expand on them and also complete the student’s knowledge with cellular histology, exercise physiology, neuroscience, biomechanics, pharmacology, pathology, and radiology/imaging. They will be completed by clinical based hours that will include medical screening, examination tests and measures, diagnostic process, therapeutic interventions, outcomes assessment, and practice management. Both before the course begin and after great importance is placed on volunteer experience in a physical therapy department of a hospital or a clinic.
And that lands us on the most important aspect of how to become a physical therapist and that is the volunteer experience. While an aspiring physical therapist’s journey must start by observing a few days in the life of a real physical therapist, so must he continue to be involved in different therapeutic practices in order to obtain enough experience to be considered as a standalone physical therapist. The fact it that physiotherapy is as much an art as it is a science that requires the practitioner to be able to first motivate and create a positive atmosphere and only then engage his patients into the therapeutic exercises.
Ultimately becoming a physical therapist is not as much a question of what curricula one should follow but it is an introspective exploration of determining whether you would be fulfilled by this job or not. That is because this is not the type of work that anyone can do and getting involved just for the hope of a large income might result in huge personal discomfort. Being a physical therapist must be first and foremost a labor of love and only then can you truly hope to rip the rewards.