Physical Therapy Assistant: What's This Career REALLY Like?

Transcription

(Music)

Dan: Is becoming a physical therapy assistant actually worth it? Do you need a degree or can you jump in skipping higher ed? John Cooper shares what the job is really like. Let's find out if this is the best career for you. Today on Time We Discuss, I wanna welcome John Cooper and it's time we discuss what it's like working as a physical therapy assistant. John, thank you for joining me today.

John Cooper: Thank you for having me, Dan. This is awesome.

Dan: I know zero about physical therapy assistants. I actually didn't even know they existed until maybe about a month or two ago, I stumbled across you on another YouTube channel. So first off, let's start at the very basics. What is the difference between a physical therapist and a physical therapy assistant?

John: A physical therapist is the first person that you usually see for a visit, if you're inpatient or outpatient, and they will gather all the information, objective measurements, they do, it's called the initial evaluation, and they will make goals talking with the patients and the assistant big time difference is that I love being able to take those goals and help the patient get towards those goals. It's kind of like a jumbled up puzzle piece and we kind of put those together. And so being able to have the communication with the PT to provide how the patient is progressing, I am able to take measurements as well and make documentation and send to doctors and updating the patient as well of how they're doing.

Dan: So I'm curious, is it analogous to like a doctor and a physician's assistant? Is that kind of like that same kind of--

John: I would say yes, it would be pretty similar because I think as a physician, a lot of times it seems to be not that the PT does, but the physician comes in, understands what's going from the nurse or the physician assistant comes in and sees you for a few moments or so, and then like this is what you're looking at, you're doing, but the PT and the PTA both do great hands-on work. So it is similar in that aspect.

Dan: Okay, cool. So let's talk about your typical day. You walk in, you get yourself ready. What is a typical day like as a PTA?

John: For me, I like to try to start up with getting myself filled first so I can provide to my patients with working out early and getting the kids off to school and stuff like that. But looking over the schedule when you come in, sometimes the night before, but getting there early enough to clock in and see who you have, maybe somebody new, what their diagnosis is, refreshing maybe what goal we want to work towards, what kind of new exercise or how we can modify something. And the main thing is time management of what your schedule would be.

Dan: Talking about your patients, do you see patients of all ages? Is it segmented at all? Where you need certain certifications to work with people of certain ages? What is that like?

John: In general, you are able to see all kind of ages and diagnoses, but where I am in an outpatient clinic, we do see some teenagers or so, but more so with the elderly, the senior citizens or so, we do have amputees, which I really love working with, I'd love to talk about that later, with neurological strokes, TBIs, and shoulders, orthopedics, so we just run the whole game, which is very exciting.

Dan: So talk to me more about amputees, let's keep going with that.

John: Yes, well, I brought my friend Steve here, which is right below the knee, and this is carbon fiber, and you got the foot in here, but this is where they would put their residual limb in. And I've been practicing for 14 years, or 18 years, I'm sorry, and where I was before 14, I had the honor to work with maybe five amputees at that time, and just kind of, I hate to say, just treating them kind of in general, because I didn't know so much about from PTA school, but now where I am is maybe three to four a day. So I really plugged into the nuances of working with somebody, such as having this socket part of having them to make sure it fits properly, how they can walk, learning how to use their prosthesis.

Dan: What about if, this is gonna show just how little I know about this, which I love, I love when this happens, do you ever work with anyone that's, they may be part of their arm is amputated, and then working with them to do different things, would that be more of like an occupational therapist? Do you ever see anything like that, or is it more just so with the legs?

John: I have not worked with anybody with the upper extremity, but where I work next or as a prosthetist, they I think are starting to look at some of that, but I have seen up hand folks with upper extremities, and that is fascinating, but that would be more so for the occupational therapist to work with.

Dan: You talk about coming in, do you typically work shift work, are you normally like a nine to five, does it vary based on the facility? What are your hours like?

John: Mine hours would be yes, more of a nine to five, but where we have, it's kind of a little bit different, is 8 to 5:30 Monday through Thursday, and then for today on Friday, I was able to be off about two o'clock, so to kind of catch up on notes, and I like to think about maybe what you drive around sometimes if you have to go to a doctor's appointment, oh, this is what other people are driving around doing at 10 o'clock in the morning, (Laughs) do grocery shopping and other chores and stuff like that, so I like to have the flexibility in the Friday afternoon. It can vary in other locations where I was before I came here, it was basically eight to five o'clock Monday through Friday, you can do shift work, that's the beauty of I think this career is that you can kind of almost pick and choose when you would like to do, you can do just straight up weekend work or you can do an extra shift or so.

Dan: Sticking with that a little bit, how common is it being part-time versus full-time? Like if someone just wanted to do this, say on the weekend or in the evenings, how common is that, do you know?

John: I'm not too familiar with that, but that definitely could be something, and that's something that I would look to do as I get older, maybe closer to retirement age, which I'm not gonna say how much longer that would be to give away (Laughs) age, but that would be something that would be fun to do just to kind of keep your skills sharp and enjoy helping out people is the main reason of why I do that, but I have not really met anybody that just does it kind of PRM.

Dan: Talking about getting older and retiring, that leads me to this question, talk to me about how physically demanding this job is, is it physically demanding? Can anyone, regardless of body type do it, do you need to be hitting the gym? What is that like?

John: Well, yes, anybody can do it, but I definitely enjoy being able to stay more active and fit to be able to have the energy to sustain and work with folks, but going through the PTA school, they will show you techniques of how to be able to get up somebody that is much smaller in school. We had somebody that was maybe 125 pounds, and we're like, this is what you need to try to get somebody that's up, you know, that can hardly stand, that's like twice your weight, so you learn techniques of stuff like that to be able to do.

Dan: Going back, you were talking about reviewing notes for the upcoming patients, and they talked about driving around during the day, which I thought was funny, kind of reminds me of when I'm taking my kids to doctor's appointment or something, I think people should be working, where is everybody, why is everyone here? But talking about those notes made me think of this question, how often are you percentage wise, how much of your time is taken up doing paperwork versus actually working with the patients, and is that a challenge balancing all that?

John: Oh, that's a great question, because I never thought about the percentage, but I would say probably about 80, 20, 80 is working in 20 notes, we have the great ability to have a laptop with us, so if somebody's taking a rest break, or if somebody can't sort of late, I'll try to type on some stuff to kind of stay with things, but you do have the option to kind of do at lunchtime or be able to take some to the house to be able to work on if you need to, such as going off to the doctor's appointment or soccer coaching and all, but you can make the balance work how you are able to do it, it's flexible.

Dan: Okay, now let's shift over to education for a little bit, talk to me about that, I'm assuming you need to go to some specific physical therapy school or something like that, what is the education world like?

John: Yes, for a physical therapy assistant, it is an associate's degree, which is a two year, but I chose kind of the more, I guess non-conventional type way, I went and got an exercise science bachelor's degree, which is four years out of high school, and then had that and that pair to do a little bit better for the associates, but I would add a caveat that I kind of maybe thought that I wish I had done in PTA school, we had I think eight patients or eight PTAs that had come right out of high school, and for being able to do that, you have to have most places is 60 hours of being like in clinical kind of shadowing, so you would come to an outpatient or an inpatient to observe of what they're doing, so that would count being able to go to PTA school, so if you graduate and you know at 18, you're out at 20, and if you're not committed with a family or so, you can go and choose whatever you would like to do.

Dan: Okay, talking about getting the associate's degree, and you also got your bachelor's degree, and so that leads me to this question, and when it comes to the show, I never talk about money specifically, I don't dive into that at all, don't wanna know about that, but generally speaking, because you have a bachelor's degree as well, does that lend itself to getting more money? Is that from a financial perspective, does it make sense for someone to get a bachelor's degree as well as the associates, or it doesn't really make a difference?

John: Well, definitely it would make sense, because it would give you a little bit more of a earning potential because you have that, and I would not know, that's interesting to think about, that if you started out like the route we talked about, doing just straight out to the two years, how long it would take maybe to equal to that, because you could get your feet grounded quicker working in specific areas and stuff like that, but I think it was quite beneficial because it laid a foundation more of the science and anatomy kind of aspect.

Dan: Okay, now if someone wanted to do what you're doing, and they wanted to do it more of like a mid-career change, what are some avenues towards that? Is there any way of getting around the PTA schooling, or is that something to self to do? If they already have a bachelor's, does that, do some of the credits transfer in kind of, can you speak to that at all, if someone wants to transition into this later in life?

John: I think yes, you could have it take your credits or so, whatever, your units where you've been maybe before, if you have like a leadership type qualities or so, then they also might be able, where you want to look at work, and they might be able to provide an education aspect for you to be able to make that happen for the PTA.

Dan: Okay, and what about on the other end? So I wanted you to think about your colleagues and your superiors, what are some growth opportunities for someone that is a PTA? If they decide that they, maybe they're getting closer to retirement, or they just want a change of scenery, what are some ways they can pivot out of being a PTA while leveraging some of their skills? What kind of opportunities are there?

John: Oh, that's a great question. Well, I definitely think with being for the PTA, you have to have the communication to the evaluating therapist and where I am, we have two PTs, so you have to have communication to different folks. Sometimes you're to the doctor, so having communication skills would play in well to wherever you would like to go. And you can take your skills to writing books or being on kind of whatever you want, like being on a podcast or something like that to be able to get your voice out, maybe what you're thinking about doing if you want to try to turn a new page in your career, the communication aspect, definitely.

Dan: Does it ever make sense for a PTA to pursue the road of PT or they're too similar, it doesn't make sense, or they're vastly different? What is that like?

John: I think that it can make sense, and what they have it now is a few years back, they made it into a doctorate actually for the PT because it used to be a bachelor's for a PT, but I've been asked that and I love being a PTA because I love being able to have those goals kind of already set, working with the patient and helping them to progress. And like earlier today, I had somebody that I had working on something and they said, I don't have any pain, and they were like, this feels great, and I said, that's right, there is the most exciting moment because sometimes the PTA will work two, three, four, visits before the PT will see them. And so being able to see that patient come in and talking about the great care, not just for myself, but how much they've become that the PT can actually physically see that, I find highly rewarding.

Dan: So this kind of leads me into this question, which is tangentially related. What would you say is the best part of your job? What makes this job the best job?

John: Well, being able to work with all kinds of different people, communities, like I was saying about kind of working with this, that I've really had the passion with the amputees, but being able just to see the neurologicals to all the different diagnosis, being able to interact with my coworkers and making people ultimately get back towards their optimal functional level.

Dan: And on the opposite side of the coin, what makes this the absolute worst job?

John: Oh man. I would say definitely the documentation is, can be a little bit, sometime consuming, you're having to take what you've been working on and put that into word, which I find is actually getting better. But having to do that, make sure that you let somebody else know what you've done that might not know necessarily about physical therapy or how the body works, especially like for the insurance as if they want to approve more visits for somebody.

Dan: I was speaking with other medical professionals and they said that sometimes you have to have the difficult conversations. In your particular field, do you ever really have difficult conversations with patients or not really? What's that like?

John: Yes, well, a lot of times the difficult aspects is if the insurance has kind of run out and the patient doesn't feel where they should be or so and trying to provide encouragement that when they're not with physical therapy, especially in the outpatient world, to be able to try and work on it at the house, which can be challenging if you don't have somebody around to help motivate you and it's hard sometimes to motivate yourself. But I find that is the toughest hardest thing.

Dan: That makes sense. And all the red tape and bureaucracy.

John: Yes.

Dan: So talking about outpatient and inpatient, what's been your experience with that? Does one have any advantage over the other? Same thing, but different. What's that like? Can you speak to that at all?

John: Oh, definitely. Well, like I said before, I was before was for 14 years was in a, like an urban hospital. So we had outpatient, inpatient and also nursing home. So I had the great opportunity to be able to kind of float and go to all three different floors. The inpatient is more so if somebody is fresh out of a surgery or if they've had some kind of a medical diagnosis change that, you know, maybe as a stroke, they're learning how to get up and walk just a little bit. You're trying to more get them to be able to walk 50 or so feet to be able to get to their car, get in and out of the car, going up and down the stairs. And the nursing home is kind of the same more. So if they can walk by themselves to go to, you know, down to the dining room or go to the bathroom or so, get up out of the bed and the outpatient can be the same, especially for the surgery that they might be a little bit further along, but you're helping them to get better strength, range of motion, and you're more kind of tied to a schedule when somebody comes in. So they have a certain time to come in and if they are late, then that puts you behind or so. And that's not necessarily the case with the inpatient, but I will say if the inpatient is frustrating because sometimes you'll get somebody and they might not want to do what you're asking them to do to get up and you're like, this is what we got to do. You're in their environment. You can't just be like, all right, well, you didn't make it here. I actually made it here. This is what we need to do. And that can be a challenge.

Dan: Talking about the way you're helping them move around kind of reminded me of this. Back in like episode five or something like that, I spoke to a speech therapist and we talked about how sometimes she might work in tandem with an occupational therapist. Do you ever work in tandem with other professionals like that, like an occupational therapist, or no, you're pretty much separate. What's that like?

John: With the outpatient, we are definitely, we have, not right now, but we have a speech therapist and an occupational therapist. So especially for someone more with the neurological aspects, we do definitely have that teamwork. And we're fortunate to be all in kind of the same area. So where we are, we have a physical therapist and then the occupational therapist is kind of right next door and the speech therapist can be. So it's nice to be able to have them where they can stay the whole time in the same area. And it makes a lot easier for the communication aspects.

Dan: Now, John, one of the things I'd like to do is identify barriers for people. So my thought process is the sooner we can identify a major barrier, the better it is for the person that's looking to do this job. So for instance, I was speaking to Jusby the Clown at the time of recording this. His episode went live, you know, a week or two ago, I guess. And one of the things he said was that if you want to be a clown, you need to be comfortable speaking in front of people, having all that attention on you. If you don't like that, being a clown is not for you. So John, I want you to think about your job, something that is critical to the job, that if someone doesn't like this, being a PTA might not be for them.

John: I would definitely say yes, some of the communication, because you're gonna need to be able to speak with the patient, tell them what you're asking them to do, being able to encourage them. And something that I'm working on is being actually to talk with the family members, the caregivers that sometimes join them for their outpatients and being able to communicate with, like we said, this speech, an OT and your other PT. So you need to really have, if you're not good at communicating, you need to have that strong foundation, so that's what I would say, the communication.

Dan: So many people, so many people have said how important it is to be a good listener and or good communicator, so no surprises there.

John: Definitely the listener aspect.

Dan: John, let's talk about unexpected perks. This is another question I'd like to ask. So sometimes people go into a job thinking, you know, they're gonna be doing XYZ and then they start doing it and they've realized that, oh, they get this added benefit. So are there any unexpected perks that come along with being a PTA?

John: Wow, that's an awesome question. Let me see. Well, I think of being able to, kind of like I said, of being able to progress somebody and see how they're doing with something that they might not have been able to have done, but, and I think you may allude to it later or so, but being able to continue your education is kind of unexpected, but it depends on where you work, it might allow you certain funding to be able to take courses, continuing educational units, that you have to have anyways to maintain your license. Depends on where you are, how often you have to do it, but being able to just provide what you choose to be able to do is how you can further yourself to be able to improve your patient's wellbeing and outcomes.

Dan: Let's talk more about continuing education. How often do you need to do that? How many hours do you need per year, every two years? What is that continuing ed, kind of like for a PTA?

John: In Georgia, where I am, it's every two years that you have to have it, and it's, I believe 30 units. So you have quite a bit of time that you can do that in various ways. Other states, I think you might have like only a year to do it or so, but what I've really, and encourage if anybody that is wanting to become a PTA, or there it is a PTA or so, is to really take the initiative to seek out education and get with an organization that it's a time with that will provide the funding to be able to do that. Because with that, the sky can be the limit of, how you can better the patients that you're working with and being able to communicate on so many other levels. It can be fun because you can also go to other places, travel to different states to do the continuing education units. You meet other maybe PTAs or other PTs, and not necessarily related to the continuing education, but I had recently gone to an APT coalition conference with the patients that we could talk about that later, that was not just education for treating somebody, but it was just fulfillment of my heart.

Dan: Let me go back to ages for a second. When you are working in your field, okay, what's the demographic like for ages? Is it pretty split? Is it mostly 40 plus? Is it mostly 20 and younger? My thought process is this, if I don't wanna work with kids, for instance, maybe 70% of the population that you're working with is kids and that could be a problem. So what is that like for you?

John: Well, fortunately, I'm pretty good with working with all kinds, but it's interesting that you said with the pediatrics because I love kids and I actually shadowed somebody when I was in rotation for that day, and let me see, can I shadow with working with kids? Nothing that was wrong with what was going on, but I was like, wow, this is a little bit more than I thought it was. So I was like, okay, it's like people say for nursing, you have a special heart to be in that. So I mean, the great thing is you can choose kind of where you want to be. If you wanna just do pediatrics, which is what we do have, you can do that or you can just do the orthopedic, which is the shoulders and the hips, or you can do just balance, which is with the neurological or the amputee. So it's wonderful to be able to kind of go into whatever aspect you would like.

Dan: That is awesome. That is really good to know. So if someone wants to work with a specific demographic, they can pretty much kind of do that. That's awesome. Talking about flexibility, how flexible is your job in general? If something comes up the day of, is it hard to take time? And obviously this is gonna depend on where the person is working, but just generally speaking, is it, do you have to make up those hours? Cause people are kind of depending on you. So what's that flexibility like?

John: It's pretty flexible. Sometimes if you do have to leave kind of unexpected, you might have somebody that might have an opening in their schedule that they can kind of to see that patient, or they might be able to be rescheduled for the next day or for a later time. Or sometimes, you know, if you normally work, you have a lunch hour, so you can kind of put somebody in at your lunch hour just to make up the difference or so. And most of the time patients are very understanding. So that's helpful.

Dan: That is awesome. Okay, before you talked about a conference, you said maybe we'll get to that later. So let's get to that later. Talk to me about this conference.

John: Oh man, yes, that was wonderful. So I actually got to travel to Las Vegas with a former, which is this kind of below the knee amputee patient that I worked with from honestly, maybe about like 10 or so visits. This gentleman was just very high energetic. I just said, just guide you here, go do your thing. But we both traveled together on the airplane, stayed in the same hotel room coming from Georgia to Vegas. And, you know, kind of somewhat of a stranger aspect with, but being able to see him and he has already kind of been into the amputee coalition. So everybody knows him. So I got to kind of tag along with him and meet other people from a virtual support group and other celebrities that work in the PT world and kind of do the amputee other kinds of things. And so I was just like celebrity starstruck. But seeing all kinds of different aspects of people walking, you know, if their prosthetic was not working very well or they're not very far along in their process or their amputation. And like I said earlier of having an upper extremity, I was able to go to a session and work out with somebody that had an upper extremity prosthesis. And he was like in his maybe a sixties and he was working out. I was like, wow, you are looking awesome. So I was like, that was just great to have, you know, like I said before, fulfilling my heart if saying people are just awesome, how they are be able to adapt and overcome things and just be amazing humans.

Dan: That is awesome. That's one of the things I really like about this time that we're living in right now is that the combination of tech and medicine, then what can be done is just amazing. I absolutely love that. John, I feel like we could continue talking about this for quite a while, but unfortunately I am running out of time. One of the things I like to do, whatever I'm speaking to someone, I like to give them the opportunity to talk about a project they're working on, a cause they believe in, more about their business. So if there's something specific you'd like to discuss, the floor is yours.

John: Talking with the gentlemen about the amputee coalition, we've made a tag team kind of partnership here in Columbus, Georgia, of really trying to have advocacy with the patient and the medical professionals. So him and I are working together. He has a business card that I can hand to an amputee. Would you like to talk to this gentleman? He's a certified peer visitor. He would love to talk to you, meet with you, take you out to lunch, and especially if it's a veteran, cause he's a veteran, you know, he understands that same kind of mentality if you've lost your extremity, but we have coming up in the end of April, and we're going to be doing next year, cause this is the second year, is a Lem loss awareness night for a local minor league team, the Columbus Clingstones that are affiliated with the Atlanta Braves. So we're having seven amputees with their family members joined right now in a picnic area. So that's wonderful and continuing to do that.

Dan: That is really, really cool. I'll make sure I get all of those links from you. I'll put them on the website. They'll be in the description, they'll be in the show notes. They'll be all over the place. So when people are trying to find that information, they can easily find that for you.

John: Awesome, thank you.

Dan: John, it's been absolutely awesome having you on Time We Discuss and we learned all about what it's like being a physical therapy assistant.

John: Thank you, Dan, I appreciate it.

Dan: So let's reflect on some of the things that John talked about. One of the things had to do with paperwork versus how much time you're actually spending with the patients. I know with other occupations, you spend a lot of time doing the paperwork and not nearly as much time working with the patients. So it's really neat to hear that he feels that he spends most of his time working with the patients and only a fraction of that actually doing the paperwork to support what he actually did. One of the other cool things was that you get to choose what age groups you wanna work with. If you wanna work with all ages, you can. If you wanna work with pediatrics, you can. If you wanna work with older people, you can do that too. So it's nice to know that depending on what your comfort level is with working with different people of different ages, you can certainly take advantage of that. It's really cool, there's a lot of flexibility for education for getting into this job. And this is especially great if you were someone that is later in life looking to pivot into a new career, this could also be great for you. So those are just some of the highlights for this job. Go back, check out this episode again, and find out if being a PTA is the best career for you.