Physical therapists are people who help you after you injure yourself. They are there to train you up. It takes a lot of training and hard work to become a physical therapist, but once you work your way up, the pay is good. Physical therapy is a stable job, because we will always need them to help us when we hurt ourselves. Also, physical therapy is beginning to become leading edge.

Physical therapists have many important jobs. They help the patient when they are hurt, they make them strong when they are weak, and they build them up when they are down. Ultimately physical therapists are there to help you after you get injured, to bring you back to your original health ( Beam 2010, 1). For example, if you break your ankle, you go to a physical therapist after a few weeks, and the therapist will give you certain exercises that slowly build the strength and muscle back into your ankle. Another important job a physical therapist does is to "measure and test the patients' strength, range of motion, balance and coordination, posture, muscle performance, respiration, and motor function. " (Mckay 2010, 1) 

Physical therapists evaluate their patients in order to get a better understanding of what they like to do.  By using these evaluations, the therapists can choose to use different tactics of rehabilitation for each patient. Some of the different kinds of therapy include water therapy, loosening of tight muscles, and heat therapy (Beam 2010, 2). Physical therapists also figure out the things they do not know, bring up very important questions, answer those questions,and use the tatics from their training in their work (Jette etal. 2010, 1).

In order to become a certified physical therapist, there are a number of steps they must complete.The first step is they must attend college and earn their bachelor’s degree (Anonymous 2010 B, 1). They can receive their bachelor’s degree at university of phoenix where they may take classes online or go to one of the sachools' many campuses. If they decide to do the online classes, the cost is 550 dollars per credit and 90 dollars for supplies that they will need. If they go to the schools' campus and do classes, it is 485 dollars per credit for the lower division classes, and 510 dollars for the higher division classes. Also it is still 90 dollars for the supplies (Anonymous 2010, C 1).

The second step requires a post- graduate Baccalaureate degree in physical therapy.(Anonymous 2010, B 2) A post- graduate Baccalaureate degree in physical therapy can be obtained at Stanford University where they can major in medicine. To major in medicine it would be about 15,000 dollars.( Anonymous 2010, D 1). The third step is they must finish a Master’s for physical therapy. Once the student has reached this stage, they may major in any specific role they would like to play as a physical therapist. For example, they could specialize in special care, medicine or sports therapy (Anonymous 2010, B 3). The fourth step is they must pass the State and national examination in which they will get licensed.(Anonymous 2010, B 4). The last step is that they must earn certification for physical therapy. For this last step, it is recommended that the student have 2,000 hours of practice in a physical therapy environment (Anonymous 2010, B 5).  

“Because of the education and certification requirements to practice as a physical therapist, starting salaries range from $47,000 to $67,000 a year, and increase with experience. Statistics show starting salaries are rising due to the high demand of physical therapists. ” (Friend 2010, 1). The starting salaries for physical therapists also depend on what type of physical therapist they are and where they work. The different jobs and places for physical therapists are a hospital therapist, a therapist in a “home healthcare setting”, and a pediatric physical therapist.

The beginning salary for a hospital therapist is anywhere between $67,000 to $77,000 a year. To be a hospital therapist you must be willing to work long hours and be on hand at anytime. Their job is to fulfill the needs of their patient and renew them to their original health. Also it is tougher to be a hospital therapist because the patient is usually in worse condition than any other place (Friend 2010, 2). The middle salary for a hospital therapist, also known as a RN, is about $51,000 to 77,000. The highest salary is about $93,000 and up (Owens 2010, 1).

The beginning salary for a therapist in a “home healthcare setting” is also in the price range of $67,000 to $77,000 per year.  This job has fewer hours to work, because the therapy is usually done in the weekdays during reasonable hours, but the physical demand is higher. They must travel to the patient’s house and perform the therapy there (Friend 2010, 3). 

The initial salary for a pediatric therapist is between $47,000 and $53,000 a year. The physical demand for this job is much lower due to the fact that you are working with children instead of adults. The hours can be hectic though, because you have to work around children’s school times and extra- curricular activities (Friend 2010, 4).           

All in all, physical therapy, out of any therapy job, makes the most money. The starting average is about 60,000, the median wage is about 70,000 and the highest paid is about 90,000 dollars and higher (Owens 2010, 2). An " advancement [in pay] is possible in research and teaching positions, or when a physical therapist opens their own practice as an independent practioner." (Schneider 2010, 1)

The future is looking very bright for the physical therapy industry. “Employment of physical therapists is expected to grow by 30 percent from 2008, to 2018, much faster than the average for all other occupations.” (Anonymous 2010, F 1) The reason that the employment rate is likely to go up so drastically, is that there is always a demand for human and even animal rehabilitation, that in the next eight years will not be able to be provided by technology. Adults in their later years are becoming more vulnerable to strokes and heart- attacks. Also they suspect that babies are and will be coming out with more birth defects and trauma (Anonymous 2010, F 2). All these things are what provide jobs for so many physical therapists, not to mention the rate of sports people that get injured on a daily basis. It is safe to say that we will still need and very much depend on physical therapists for many years to come. 

The world of physical therapy has come a long way through the years. First they started out with the basic therapy, like walking and building up the muscles naturally. For example the patient would do exercises that used their own body weight. Then as time went on they developed machines that helped  work the different muscles in different ways, but now there is a new advancement that has really brought physical therapy to become leading edge. This contraption is known as “ZeroG technology. ” (Anonymous 2010, G 1). ZeroG is a device that hooks to the ceiling and then hooks on to the patient’s back and allows them to walk around without feeling much pain and without working the injured muscle too much (Tizabi 2010, 1). Although physical therapy is advancing in technology, it is a tough thing to do.  If someone makes a new device, they have to do a number of things to get that device approve. First they have to bring it to a physical therapist that will use it, then the physical therapist has to evaluate the complexity of the invention, and check to see if there is any danger in using the product. The last thing, is they have to evaluate how the device can be communicated or explained how to use (Foord-May etal. 2010, 2). 

In conclusion, it takes a special kind of person to be a physical therapist. You have to be able to put in long hours, go through a lot of physical and mental challenges, and train hard in order to do all that. Physical therapist make decent money in the beginning and the more experience you have, the better the pay, but the reward is the greatest. To be able to see your patient who could hardly walk when you first had them, then be able to run when you were finished with them is amazing.

    Physical therapists have a pretty hard job. I do not think I would want to do this job, because it has too many hours and i would not enjoy doing something like that, that took up all my time and did not pay that much. I also can not handle blood or broken bones, or anything like that, and you have to go through the training and be able to handle that stuff.