Physical Therapy Career Gives Championship Athlete Opportunity To Excel In Life Beyond Sports
After playing on her high school’s state championship soccer team, Barb Garcia assumed her sense of triumph would never be equaled. She didn’t realize her career as a physical therapist would allow her to experience that championship sensation on a recurring basis.
Garcia is an inpatient hospital physical therapist for SSM Rehab at SSM DePaul Health Center in Bridgeton, Mo. Although she hasn’t played soccer since injuring a knee as a young adult, she still experiences victories through her patients vicariously everyday. Garcia’s job allows her to regularly experience a feeling only a true champion understands.
“When I step into the ICU and I am assigned to help a comatose patient, I work with that patient, gaining little victories each day with bedside therapy, until that patient is ready to leave the hospital and resume a normal life,” Garcia said. “I can’t help but share in that immense feeling of relief, joy and triumph, exactly the feeling I experienced as part of a championship team. I can’t imagine any career where you can experience that emotion as deeply as in health care.”
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Physical therapists must understand how all the body parts interact. Using a hands-on approach that begins with examination, diagnosis and treatment, physical therapists, like Garcia, teach their patients how to take care of themselves by showing them how to do exercises and how to use their body properly to gain strength and mobility. Garcia combines motivational skills with an acceptance of small, daily advances to help her patients achieve physical independence again after a major injury or illness.
And, there are other special benefits to being a physical therapist as compared to other health care professionals, Garcia said.
“As a physical therapist, your work schedule is mostly set,” Garcia said. “Most physical therapy sessions are scheduled throughout regular workday hours. Physical therapy is a great opportunity for people intrigued by a health care career but aren’t sure they want evening hours.”
Opportunity also describes the many roles available to a physical therapist. Having added a master’s degree in health care administration to her physical therapy education and certification, Garcia was able to rotate responsibilities during her 14-year career from staff therapist to therapy manager and back to staff therapist once again to accommodate a growing family.
“Physical therapists have so many options open to them,” Garcia said. “You can choose to work with more seriously injured or ill patients who need long-term rehabilitation in the inpatient setting, as I do, or you can work with outpatients who have less serious injuries and have shorter-term rehabilitation goals.”
Therapists also can choose to work on the less physical side of physical therapy as a manager or program developer.
However, just as athletic success demands hard work, dedication and preparation, so too does a career in physical therapy, Garcia said.
“An advanced college degree is a must,” she said. “Grades do matter, as do the courses you take and the training you accept. Volunteering as a PT tech in a rehabilitation setting or a hospital is a worthy introduction to physical therapy.”
Physical therapists are required to take a national examination and be licensed by the state in which they practice. Some physical therapists seek advanced certification in a clinical specialty, such as orthopedic, neurolgic, cardiopulmonary, pediatric, geriatric or sports therapy.
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