As this blog comes to a close, I've gained an abundance of knowledge and understanding of so many things involved with physical therapy. I went into this blog project with the mindset that I was going to do the posts each week because it was for a writing class, but I got more out of it than just a letter grade. After completing this blog, I've learned that the field of physical therapy is made up of so much more than I had ever anticipated.
In a couple of my blog posts, I talked about the amount of schooling that it takes to become a physical therapist. Before the blog, I wasn't really sure about the education requirements for physical therapy and I was surprised at what I found. It's a lot more competitive to get into a graduate school for physical therapy than what I was thinking. I talked about it in my week 6 open post when I researched physical therapy schools in Michigan. All of the GPA requirements were well above a 3.0 and Central Michigan University has an everage GPA of 3.72 for their requirements. Not only is the field competitive but there's also several years schooling involved. The schooling includes 4 years to get a bachelors degree and if you choose to get a doctorate of physical therapy degree right after your undergraduate studies, it's another 3-4 years of schooling which totals to about 8 years of school. If you don't choose to get a doctorate degree right away there's still graduate school to get a master's degree but then there's a transitional degree that you would have to recieve in order to get doctorate status as a physical therapist. By the year 2020 all entry level physical therapists are supposed to have a doctorate degree, so my goal is to just go to school right away for that. When you stop to think about it, it's 8 years of school. It's definitely more than I had expected but if the field is trying to grow stronger in terms of skill set and knowledge then 8 years seems to be appropriate.
I also discussed the fact there were different areas of specialization in physical therapy. I talked about it a few times in my blog and how before this I've always thought there was just regular physical therapy and physical therapy involved sports, but the options don't end there. There are 8 main areas of physical therapy including cardiovascular and pulmonary, clinical electrophysiology, geriatrics, neurology,
orthopaedics, pediatrics, sports, and women's health. There are quite a few options that a physical therapist could choose from if they wanted to specialize.
After these 10 weeks of blogging, I was able to dig deeper into learning about the physical therapy field and it was eye opening. As I reflect on everything that I learned, I try to envision where I see myself going in this field. Theres a good possibilty of finding an area that I'm passionate about. In one of my more recent open posts, I talked about how sports physical therapy is an area of specialization that is something that I've been interested in. However, there's still a lot to learn and I might find that I like something else more than the area of sports.
One of the weeks that was most helpful to me in terms of understanding physical therapy was the week we did a post on an interview we had to conduct. From the interview, I leraned that knowledge isn't the only thing that makes up a good physical therapist. You really have to have the personality and mindset to be succsessful. A physical therapist needs to be patient with the people they're dealing with and they need to be encouraging at all times. The patients will most likely struggle and frustrated and a physical therapist has to know how to deal with them. It can be mentally tiring and also physically. A physical therapist is on their feet almost all day helping patients and a lot of the time those patients need to be helped with their support and balance, stretching, or just small things that they were once be able to do on their own.
At the end of all of this, this blog helped me decide that I want to do this. I'm going to have to dedicate a lot of my time and energy towards reaching my goals and being succsessful, but this is what I want to do. I read a lot of stories and articles about how physical therapy has helped someone, and that's what I want to do. I want to be able to have an impact on someones life in a positive way, and through physical therapy I think I'll be able to do that. So, even though I found that there was a lot more to physical therapy than I ever thought, I also found that physical therapy is right for me because I have the drive to do whatever it takes.
CITATIONS
College of Natural Science. Michigan State University, 2014. Web. 20 Feb 2014.
Scherba, Ramona. Personal interview. 26 Jan 2014.
"The Doctor Debate:Physical Therapists Share Their Thoughts on DPT." therapyjobs.com. TherapyJobs.com, 2014. Web. 24 Feb 2014.
Travel Force Staffing. "Top 8 Physical Therapy Certifciations by Specialty."
Travelforce. Offical Therapist Blog, 2014. Web. 6 Feb 2014.
