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By admin, September 23, 2009 4:42 pm

How to find out more about Physical and Occupational therapy careers?

I’m a college sophmore interested in one of these two fields, but I’m not sure which one I want to go into. Can anyone tell me some information about what it’s like to be in these careers, from experience please, or give me hints about how I could find out more about them. Would someone in a hospital setting allow me to ask them some questions maybe or shadow them for a day? Also, what is the level of dealing with wounds/injuries in these two fields. Thanks

Both fields are super rewarding, excellent fields to go into if you like helping people. In both fields you have the opportunity to work in a variety of settings with a variety of people, from home health to a hospital, outpatient setting, or even a school. With occupational therapy you can expect to be helping individuals achieve better fine motor control to accomplish some sort of occupation that is meaningful to them. That occupation could be something such as getting dressed by themselves in the morning, to relearning to write after suffering a stroke. With physical therapy you’re working more with gross motor skills like walking, or regaining full range of motion in a joint after some sort of traumatic injury. In my experience, most people can tell which job they would be more interested in based on the stereotype that most physical therapists are athletic, sporty types of people, and occupational therapists are usually crafty and highly creative. These are of course stereotypes that don’t always fit the bill though.

If you’re interested in job shadowing I would highly suggest looking into following someone around at a hospital or outpatient type of setting. Most students at all schools are required to do that before applying to their respective programs, so the staff is used to accommodating those types of needs.

If you want to learn more about either profession I suggest looking up the prospective governing websites for each profession, for physical therapy it is the APTA, and for occupational therapy it is the AOTA. Also, when I was in high school I always used the Princeton Review to look up majors and learn more about them.

Good luck in your search.

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