Physical Therapy Flashcards

What is Physical Therapy​?

Physical therapy is a branch of healthcare concerned with specially designed exercises that help patients to regain physical abilities. Physical therapists or PTs treat individuals who have medical problems or other health-related conditions that limit their abilities to move and perform everyday activities.

PTs patients vary enormously, a PT might treat newborn infants with musculoskeletal birth defects, sports stars with injuries, adults with sciatica or elderly patients recovering from a stroke. Typically, PTs find themselves working within a team of healthcare professionals to deliver all-around patient care. Physiotherapists will liaise with clinical psychologists, surgeons, nurses, doctors, speech therapists, occupational therapists, and audiologists to provide  

What's the Difference between Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy?

When a patient is recovering from an injury or illness they may very well have both a physical and occupational therapist. Whilst the two may consult their scope varies. The physiotherapist is focused on treating a person’s injury with methods such as manual therapy, whereas the occupational therapist is focused on helping the person optimize those abilities and achieve independence.

Careers in ​Physical Therapy

To become a physiotherapist you’ll need to complete an undergraduate program, subjects such as psychology, biology, and exercise science are good choices and then you’ll need to complete a two to three year Master’s degree or a three-year Doctoral degree in Physical Therapy.

Physical therapists may work in a number of setting including in outpatient clinics, private practice, hospital, nursing and residential homes, sports clubs and facilities and work settings. As a physical therapist, you’ll work on-one with a patient and as so you’ll be with them each step of the way as they make progress through treatment. Helping a person back to full mobility after an injury or illness has to be one of the most rewarding aspects of healthcare. PTs provide emotional support as well as clinical excellence as they educate, rehabilitate, treat, and manage pain in their patients.

The average salary for a Physiotherapist in the US is in excess of $60,000. Conversely, if you were to become a Sports Physiotherapist with a top sports player then the package could be quite substantial. Tennis stars, in particular, require PT’s to help them maintain peak physical fitness and avoid injury and as so just staying healthy means they can afford to pay handsome salaries to PTs and the perks include worldwide travel.

If you’d like to find out more about Physical Therapy then The American Physical Therapist Association is a great resource or you could also try The World Confederation for Physical Therapy.  Or why not check out this great video which features Greg Todd talking about his fifteen-year career in physical therapy.

Learning Physical Therapy

Physical therapy students learn medical terminology and concepts whilst learning about physical techniques and how to administer treatments effectively. In professional practice, physical therapists diagnose conditions as well as managing treatment programs and as such you’ll need to hone your problem-solving and critical thinking skills.

Brainscape can help PT students to master academic principles allowing them to focus directly on developing confidence in clinical techniques.

Physical Therapy in Brainscape

To become a PT you’ll have to pass the NPTE Exam which is a multiple choice test with 250 questions. You can use the physical therapy flashcards already prepared in Brainscape by other Physical Therapy students and academics to help you prepare for this tough exam.

Students studying PT might also find other Brainscape pages useful such as medical terminology, pediatrics, anatomy, human biology, neuropsychiatry, geriatrics, and pathophysiology.

If you need to ace your exams to study physical therapy at college then the AP Biology and AP Chemistry study guides in Brainscape have helped thousands of students, already.          

Learn faster with Brainscape

Brainscape has developed an educational tool that is exciting news for learners. With this super-charged educational tool, learners are able to learn twice as fast and remember longer

The confidence-based repetition system is known as CBR and incorporates three learning methods: Active Recall, Metacognition, and Spaced Repetition to deliver outstanding results.

The first of these learning methods is active recall, which you will also see used in other learning tools due to it’s proven effectiveness. In Brainscape you have to work a little to retrieve answers, consequently, the neural pathways are strengthened. The next time you need that piece of information you’ll be more able to retrieve it, than should you have simply recognized it.

A further key learning method that the CBR system uses is spaced repetition, yet another scientifically proven method of learning. This is the method of seeing bite-sized pieces of information at spaced intervals which is most effective and is the essence of the flashcard format.

What makes Brainscape different, however, is its unique metacognitive process which fuels the algorithm. In other educational tools, you see flashcards randomly, you’ll often see flashcards over and over that you already know well when you could be spending your time more fruitfully on flashcards you don’t know well. With Brainscape the algorithm is precise therefore you learn optimally at all times. The data required to fuel the precision in user terms couldn’t be easier for the learner to give.

After you have reviewed each flashcard, simply record a rating from 1-5 that is representative of your understanding of the material covered. That is all the information the algorithm needs to determine the best place in the deck for that flashcard. If you rate your understanding as a “5”, the algorithm will occasionally recap that info but it will keep showing you the cards you rate a “1” and you’ll focus on improving your understanding of those areas.

This unique process makes Brainscape the most powerful learning engine on today’s market today, so start learning the smart way with Brainscape, today

How to get started

Getting started learning Physical Therapy with Brainscape is easy, here’s how to begin.   

There’s loads of great content already created by top contributors whatever you’re studying, choose from Musculoskeletal disorders, Goni Range of Motion, Biomechanics, or Pain Management. Just click on a deck to start learning the Brainscape way.

Some learners prefer to learn by authoring their own flashcards and as you do so you’ll improve the memory trace and strengthen the neural pathways further. To get started making your own super-effective interactive learning catalog just click “make flashcards” at the top of the page.   

Brainscape is passionate about learning and we wish you all the best in your Physical Therapy studies and your future career.