Career Assignment

Career Assignment I wish to be a Doctor in Physical Therapy. In order to get started, I would need to have a Bachelors of Science in Health Sciences Emphasis on Physical Therapy. From there , I would go into the University of Central Arkansas’ Doctorate of Physical Therapy program.

The four years of undergraduate would cost roughly $56,000 and the doctoral program would cost about $50,000. While this is a large sum of money, Doctors of Physical Therapy (DPT) make anywhere from $60,000 a year to $100,000 a year. This number increases dramatically after 5 to 9 years of experience. The annual income you make largely depends on where you work. DPTs can work in clinics, hospitals, private offices, and in other fields like the military and athletics. Each venue offers different salaries but also different benefits and drawbacks. Because of the wide range of fields and specialties one could go into within physical therapy and the assurance that people will continue getting injured, the prospected job availability and advancement of the field can only increase.

Physical Therapy is a financially sound field. It also provides great job security. While you do need some element of physical fitness, I’ve met DPTs well into their 50’s that weren’t on the floor with patients but teaching or serving in administrative positions. It is a career that one could be in for life.

There will always be a demand for DPTs and a need for them. It also isn’t a career that would get to boring or monotonous. There are always new patients with new problems coming in, and continual training, education, and specialization classes will be available if not required every year. With physical therapy you could work in a variety of settings, meet a wide range of people, work practically anywhere in the world, and serve in different positions like administration, floor overseer, or one on one DPT. This field is also closely related to occupational therapy and works closely with speech therapy and other therapists which would provide other outlets or fields that you could get degrees in or switch too.

While DPTs do make a substantial living, I would be more interested in this field because of the service to people and the freedom it would allow me to have.

Physical therapy allows a DPT to reach out to a large variety of people as injuries don’t discriminate socially, economically, racially, or by anything else. Anyone could get injured at any time, so it brings together people from all over. I really enjoy helping people and being a DPT would allow me to impact and change people’s lives.

The plus side is someone would pay me to do it. Another plus side to being a DPT is you can pretty much work however much/often you wish. At the physical therapy clinic I work at, there are therapists that work from 8-5 or 9-6 and part-time either half days or only three days a week. The clinic isn’t open on weekends, so there are no weekends unless you choose to work at a hospital and work a day. Also if a patient cancels their appointment, and it is an evening appointment, you just get to go home. There isn’t a lot of paperwork or stress. There are no emergencies that you have to be on call for, and it is a very flexible field that allows you to have a family.

In working at the clinic, I’ve had multiple opportunities to work with and talk with different physical therapist. All of them could only speak positively about the field of physical therapy. With the exception of a few rude patients and isolated circumstances, physical therapy is a relatively positive field to be in. One of the DPTs was actually going to go into Med. School but decided that physical therapy would offer a better quality of life.

Another is a lymphedema specialist. The cool thing about her is she is only a specialist in that because the hospital needed one so they paid for her schooling and everything. Now she gets paid more because they paid her to be specialized.

If you work within a hospital or in a branch of a hospital, the benefits in terms of insurance are usually pretty great. Physical therapy in general is one of the most rewarding fields with the best benefits for me.