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Physical Therapists

  • Bright Outlook
  • Rapid Growth

Assess, plan, organize, and participate in rehabilitative programs that improve mobility, relieve pain, increase strength, and improve or correct disabling conditions resulting from disease or injury.

What you’d do

  • Plan, prepare, or carry out individually designed programs of physical treatment to maintain, improve, or restore physical functioning, alleviate pain, or prevent physical dysfunction in patients.
  • Perform and document an initial exam, evaluating data to identify problems and determine a diagnosis prior to intervention.
  • Record prognosis, treatment, response, and progress in patient's chart or enter information into computer.
  • Instruct patient and family in treatment procedures to be continued at home.
  • Evaluate effects of treatment at various stages and adjust treatments to achieve maximum benefit.
  • Confer with the patient, medical practitioners, or appropriate others to plan, implement, or assess the intervention program.
  • Administer manual exercises, massage, or traction to help relieve pain, increase patient strength, or decrease or prevent deformity or crippling.
  • Obtain patients' informed consent to proposed interventions.

Skills that matter

  • Active Listening
  • Critical Thinking
  • Reading Comprehension
  • Service Orientation
  • Social Perceptiveness
  • Speaking

How to get there

Extensive preparation: most need graduate school, such as a master's degree or higher

Also called

  • Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT)
  • Home Care Physical Therapist (Home Care PT)
  • Inpatient Physical Therapist (Inpatient PT)
  • Pediatric Physical Therapist (Pediatric PT)
  • Acute Care PT (Acute Care Physical Therapist)
  • Outpatient Physical Therapist (Outpatient PT)

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