Physical Therapist Assistant Assist physical therapists in providing physical therapy treatments and procedures. May, in accordance with state laws, assist in the development of treatment plans, carry out routine functions, document the progress of treatment, and modify specific treatments in accordance with patient status and within the scope of treatment plans established by a physical therapist. Generally requires formal training.
Physical Therapist Assistant is Also Know as
In different settings, Physical Therapist Assistant is titled as
- Certified Physical Therapist Assistant (CPTA)
- Home Care Physical Therapy Assistant
- Home Health Physical Therapist Assistant
- Licensed Physical Therapist Assistant (LPTA)
- Licensed Physical Therapy Assistant
- Outpatient Physical Therapist Assistant
- Per Diem Physical Therapist Assistant (Per Diem PTA)
- Physical Therapist Assistant (PTA)
- Physical Therapy Assistant (PTA)
Education and Training of Physical Therapist Assistant
Physical Therapist Assistant is categorized in Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed
Experience Required for Physical Therapist Assistant
Previous work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is required for these occupations. For example, an electrician must have completed three or four years of apprenticeship or several years of vocational training, and often must have passed a licensing exam, in order to perform the job.
Education Required for Physical Therapist Assistant
Most occupations in this zone require training in vocational schools, related on-the-job experience, or an associate's degree.
Degrees Related to Physical Therapist Assistant
- Bachelor in Physical Therapy Assistant
- Associate Degree Courses in Physical Therapy Assistant
- Masters Degree Courses in Physical Therapy Assistant
Training Required for Physical Therapist Assistant
Employees in these occupations usually need one or two years of training involving both on-the-job experience and informal training with experienced workers. A recognized apprenticeship program may be associated with these occupations.
Related Ocuupations
Some Ocuupations related to Physical Therapist Assistant in different industries are
- Physical Therapist Aides
- Occupational Therapy Aides
- Occupational Therapy Assistants
- Psychiatric Technicians
- Recreational Therapists
- Respiratory Therapists
- Radiation Therapists
- Psychiatric Aides
- Medical Assistants
- Surgical Assistants
- Physical Therapists
- Occupational Therapists
- Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Physicians
- Emergency Medicine Physicians
- Physician Assistants
- Advanced Practice Psychiatric Nurses
- Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses
- Acute Care Nurses
- Massage Therapists
- Nurse Practitioners
What Do Physical Therapist Assistant do?
- Instruct, motivate, safeguard, and assist patients as they practice exercises or functional activities.
- Confer with physical therapy staff or others to discuss and evaluate patient information for planning, modifying, or coordinating treatment.
- Measure patients' range-of-joint motion, body parts, or vital signs to determine effects of treatments or for patient evaluations.
- Secure patients into or onto therapy equipment.
- Fit patients for orthopedic braces, prostheses, or supportive devices, such as crutches.
- Train patients in the use of orthopedic braces, prostheses, or supportive devices.
- Transport patients to and from treatment areas, lifting and transferring them according to positioning requirements.
- Monitor operation of equipment and record use of equipment and administration of treatment.
- Clean work area and check and store equipment after treatment.
- Assist patients to dress, undress, or put on and remove supportive devices, such as braces, splints, or slings.
- Administer traction to relieve neck or back pain, using intermittent or static traction equipment.
- Perform clerical duties, such as taking inventory, ordering supplies, answering telephone, taking messages, or filling out forms.
- Prepare treatment areas and electrotherapy equipment for use by physiotherapists.
- Perform postural drainage, percussions, or vibrations or teach deep breathing exercises to treat respiratory conditions.
- Observe patients during treatments to compile and evaluate data on their responses and progress and provide results to physical therapist in person or through progress notes.
- Administer active or passive manual therapeutic exercises, therapeutic massage, aquatic physical therapy, or heat, light, sound, or electrical modality treatments, such as ultrasound.
- Communicate with or instruct caregivers or family members on patient therapeutic activities or treatment plans.
- Attend or conduct continuing education courses, seminars, or in-service activities.
- Document patient information, such as notes on their progress.
- Instruct patients in proper body mechanics and in ways to improve functional mobility, such as aquatic exercise.
- Perform therapeutic wound care.
Qualities of Good Physical Therapist Assistant
- Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
- Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
- Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
- Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
- Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
- Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
- Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
- Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
- Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
- Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
- Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
- Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
- Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
- Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
- Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
- Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
- Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
- Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
- Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing.
- Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
- Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
- Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
- Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
- Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
- Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
- Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
- Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
- Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
- Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
- Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
- Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
- Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
- Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
- Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
- Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
- Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
- Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
- Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
- Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
- Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
- Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
- Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
- Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
- Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
- Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
- Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
- Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one's side when the eyes are looking ahead.
- Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
- Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
- Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
Tools Used by Physical Therapist Assistant
- Above-the-knee prosthetics
- Ankle-foot orthotics
- Arm prosthetics
- Automated external defibrillators AED
- Back braces
- Balance beams
- Balance boards
- Below-the-knee prosthetics
- Blood pressure cuffs
- Body-fat calipers
- Cardiac monitors
- Cervical traction equipment
- Cold packs
- Continuous passive motion CPM equipment
- Crutches
- Desktop computers
- Digital cameras
- Digital video cameras
- Electromyographs EMG
- Ergometers
- Exercise trampolines
- Free weights
- Front-wheel walkers
- Functional electrical stimulation FES equipment
- Gait belts
- Goniometers or arthrometers
- Hand grips
- Hemi walkers
- Hi-lo manipulation tables
- High-voltage galvanic stimulation machines
- Hoyer lifts
- Hydrotherapy pools
- Inclinometers
- Interferential electrical stimulation machines
- Intermittent compression units
- Iontopheresis equipment
- Knee braces
- Lavage hydrotherapy equipment
- Lower-body isokinetic machines
- Massage equipment
- Mechanical percussors
- Mechanical stethoscopes
- Medical nasal cannulas
- Medicine balls
- Muscle strength dynamometers
- Notebook computers
- Paraffin baths
- Parallel bars
- Patient positioning devices
- Pelvic traction equipment
- Personal computers
- Pick-up walkers
- Platform walkers
- Plumb lines
- Portable oxygen equipment
- Posture grids
- Powder boards
- Protective gowns
- Pulse oximeters
- Quad canes
- Reachers
- Reciprocating walkers
- Reflex hammers
- Resistive exercise bands
- Rotating bed
- Sacro-illiac joint lumbar corsets
- Safety gloves
- Safety goggles
- Sequential compression devices
- Short wave diathermy devices
- Single point canes
- Sliding boards
- Slings
- Splints
- Standing cages
- Standing tables
- Stationary bicycles
- Stretchers
- Surgical masks
- Swiss exercise balls
- Tablet computers
- Therapeutic hot packs
- Therapeutic treadmill exercisers
- Tilt tables
- Total lift chairs
- Transcutaneous electric nerve stimulation TENS equipment
- Ultrasound machines
- Ultraviolet UV phototherapy lamps
- Upper-body isokinetic machines
- Wheelchairs
- Whirlpool therapy baths
- Wrist splints
Technology Skills required for Physical Therapist Assistant
- Accounting software
- Arena Health Systems Phys-X
- Beaver Creek Software The THERAPIST
- Billing software
- BioEx Systems Exercise Pro
- Bookkeeping software
- Client caseload management software
- dBASE
- Eazy Application Systems QuickEMR
- eClinicalWorks EHR software
- Email software
- FileMaker Pro
- Knees Software PT DocTools
- Laboratory information system LIS
- Medical condition coding software
- Microsoft Access
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Office software
- Microsoft Outlook
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Microsoft Windows
- Microsoft Word
- PhysioTools Tools RG
- Rehab Documentation Company ReDoc Suite
- Scheduling software
- SpectraSoft AppointmentsPRO
- SpectraSoft DocuPRO
- Spreadsheet software
- Summit Software CarePoint
- TherAssist
- Video game software
- Virtual reality game software
- Word processing software