The Physical Therapy Assistant and Specialization

By attending a physical therapy assistant program you are learning a discipline that is rising and varying. As with the general practitioner into medicine the physical therapist is specializing more and more. You can now make your profession as a physical therapy assistant specializing into the hands and wrists. The hand and wrist joint are a very complicated skeletal structure. As you can glimpse there are many bones into your hand and wrist system. More often than not your patient will be into some kind of cast. Having this many bones motionless for a long period of time will set off critical inflexibility. You will begin seeing the patient even while the cast remains on. You will be educating your patient into how the wrist works so that he or she understands the reasons for the exercises involved.

You will most likely start with explaining “the single-hour rule”. Many patients ask how many repetitions of each exercise should I do? This of course depends on the individual. Five times for each exercise is a good place to start. Tell this individual not to worry about any discomfort experienced while exercising. It is the period of single to two hours after the exercising is done you are concerned with. The discomfort experienced an hour later is what we pay attention to. If this does Colford has not gotten less the individual should cut back on how many times the exercise is done. Say the discomfort has diminished. Continue with the same amount of repetitions. If there was no discomfort or a completely disappeared repetitions can increase. You now understand “the single-hour rule”.

No diminishing of the discomfort equals cutting back on the repetitions. It does not mean stopping any exercise. Under no situation should any exercise be stopped. So, for example, you did five repetitions you would then cut back to two repetitions. You should explain how frequently exercisers should be performed.. Three exercise sessions into the 24 hour period should be sufficient into the beginning. You want to get your patient to a point where they are exercising every two hours. Emphasize the thought of getting well. The more your patient exercises the quicker this will come about.

Just looking into becoming a physical therapy assistant. Well the time is right. The science is rising. These opportunities will just increase with time as more and more specialization comes about. Methods of aiding the elderly are also being developed. We see a record number of “healthy” 90 and 100-year-old people. Physical therapy will become increasingly important with these individuals.

You can become a physical therapy assistant and have a great career!