What Physical Therapy Is

Physical Therapist Training

 I referred to the training a physical therapist has in my last blog.  Physical therapy has been going through a transition in the last 10 years.  Only 10-15 years ago, most PTs graduating from college received a bachelor of physical therapy degree.  It had been that way since our addition as a healthcare practitioner in the 50s (see the link: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3969/is_200301/ai_n9302437/ for a history of where the profession came from).  Around 10 years ago, the physical therapy profession’s main association, the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), released a document titled Vision 2020 (for more info, go to http://www.apta.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Vision_20201&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm&TPLID=285&ContentID=32061). 

In it was outlined a vision as to where the profession was headed.  One of its many components was a doctoral level trained professional.  In order to make that vision a reality, the training of a physical therapist was going to need to be significantly increased.   To meet that demand, colleges and university programs slowly started transitioning from the bachelor degree of old to the doctoral level degree of today.  In 2009, most programs have made the transition.

So, what training does a physical therapist have?  Well, our training is quite extensive.  To see a list of courses that a physical therapist student takes, I took a sample of where I trained, St Louis University: http://www.slu.edu/x5774.xml.  It now takes around 6-7 years of training with some summer sessions to graduate with a Doctorate of Physical Therapy degree.  As you can see from the education, a physical therapist comes out of college with a solid foundation of how the body functions.

Another trend that we see in the profession is the move towards Residency Trained clinicians.  This is a relatively new concept in physical therapy and I will go more into what that means in my next blog.  Do you have any thoughts regarding a physical therapist’s training?  Was there anything that you were unaware of when you read this?

Tags: APTA