 Have you ever thought I want to become a healthcare professional, but I don't even know where to begin? If so, then this series is for you. I'm going to be starting a new series called Who Wants To Be. In that series, I'm going to be going over various different healthcare professions, and you know, I'm doing this because there's oh so many of them. There's a ton of healthcare professions beyond just becoming a physician, a PA, or a nurse. So hopefully throughout this series, you'll learn about each of those professions and then you can make the best decision on which profession is right for you. So let's get into the video right now. So if you guys sit down and welcome back to my channel, if you're new to my channel, I'm a healthcare professional, I'm a physician assistant, and I work currently in trauma and acute care surgery. Since becoming a healthcare professional, I've realized that there are so many aspects of the healthcare world in terms of different jobs and careers that you can get into, and it was crazy because I was pretty tunnel vision and I was like, oh, I want to be a doctor, right? Or I knew nurses, and you know, I met a couple PAs, but I didn't realize all of the other professions that are in healthcare. And sometimes, you know, being a doctor or a nurse or PA is not right for you. And so that is what this new series is going to help you determine which profession is right for you. So the first profession I want to talk about is becoming a physical therapist. In this series, I'm going to be answering five simple questions for you. That is, what is the profession? What do they do? How do you become a part of this profession? How long does it take? And of course, how much do they make? All right. So let's get into the video, okay? If you haven't already answered it, take a look around. If you like what you see, go ahead and subscribe. So what's a physical therapist? Physical therapists are health professionals who help patients live a healthy and active life. They're kind of described as experts in movement because they help patients through prescribing exercises, hands-on care, and patient education. So what exactly do physical therapists do? So physical therapists work in tandem with other members of the healthcare model. So for instance, myself as a trauma PA, I work on a consistent basis with physical therapists in the hospital. A lot of our patients come in from traumatic situations where they have broken bones or they have traumatic brain injuries. And therefore, a lot of their function is either debilitated or lost. Because of that, we work with the physical therapists to help in the assessment and creation of a treatment plan that will work for what will help our patient get back to an assemblance of what they used to be. Now, sometimes that may need more physical therapy, right? So they may have to go to a rehab. They may not be able to do this at home, and they may not get all of the care that they need at the hospital, because it may be greater than the level of care that we're able to provide on a consistent basis. That is where the PT comes in to understand and to help us understand and to make suggestions on, hey, do they need to go to a acute care rehab or a subacute rehab or a long-term care facility, or can they do this at home? So essentially, physical therapists develop this plan to help improve the ability of our patients to move, increase their range of motion, reduce and manage any pain that they may be feeling, and then, of course, either restore function or restore some aspect of the function that they may have lost to help prevent any further disability. So how do you become a physical therapist? So to become a physical therapist, you have to have a bachelor's degree at first and then go to graduate school. A GRE is required for the majority of programs, but again, you have to look at each individual program to determine what their prerequisite requirements are. With that being said, it is important for you to go to PT CAS, because that is their central application site. It will have all the list of their participating programs and then through there, you can click on each program to figure out what the various different prerequisite requirements are. PT school is typically three years. It is a doctorate's degree, so you will become a doctor of physical therapy. There are bridge programs where you can do a three-in-three. So six-year program, you'll do three years of undergrad and then three years in your physical therapy program. In school, you'll have didactic year where you're just doing learning. You're learning about the body. You're learning anatomy. You're learning how the body moves. So like kinesiology, you're going to be learning all of those things in your didactic year and then you're going to be able to put it into practice in your clinical year. As I stated before, it takes about three years to get your degree in physical therapy, but there are various different program models. So you just have to go to their website. So that is apta.org or PT CAS, which is the application website to get a list of the programs that you're interested in so that you can see specifically how long their programs are and what you have to expect in terms of prerequisite requirements. Now let's get down to the money. So how much do PTs make? So according to U.S. news, the average salary of a physical therapist in 2020 was 91,000. Now that, right? I think that that is actually a pretty decent salary. Obviously, there are people who make more and physical therapists that make less depending on if you're inpatient, outpatient, private practice or part of a group, but ultimately the decision is yours in terms of if this is the right career for you. So who wants to be a physical therapist? Leave me a comment in the comment section below and let me know if you're ready to become a PT. If not, obviously there's still so many more careers that we have to cover. If you haven't already answered like this video, follow me on Instagram and on the PA and on Instagram at Get That to University. Thank you guys so much for watching and let me know what career you would like to see yet. Next, I'm thinking of doing respiratory therapists or even like occupational therapists or a nurse midwife. There's so many others guys, so let me know in the comment section below. Thank you guys so much for watching. I will talk to you guys next time.