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What is the pathway to become a Pediatric Physical Therapist?

I am going attend a four-year university this upcoming fall and was wondering how I could accomplish this goal.

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renee’s Answer

Hello. You may want to look at colleges that offer physical therapy/collaborative agreement with a graduate school. A college that offers this program either provides guaranteed acceptance or preferred admissions into the Doctor of Physical Therapy program. You may also want to begin an internship with a license PT. Try to round yourself out with interning in different settings. Inpatient and outpatient. Continue throughout your schooling to get as many observation hours as possible. Maintain high performance grades in the sciences. Find student engagement programs or clubs that are relative to what your are studying. Doing these things will assist in making you stand out and that's exactly what you want to do.
Best of Luck!!
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Deborah R.’s Answer

I was a pediatric physical therapist and the clinical instructor for many students who wanted to have an affiliation in pediatric physical therapy. I suggest that you be sure you get a clinical placement in a pediatric setting as one of your clinical placements when you are in school. Usually this would be your last affiliation. This will help you to be sure you want to focus in pediatrics and will give you experience working with a pediatric population.
Pediatrics is a huge population. The age goes from 0 years to 18 or 21 years. You can work in a school - my favorite, or hospital, in-patient or out-patient, children with various diagnoses. It is quite fulfilling to know that if you are able to help a child, your help will last the entire lifetime of the child.
If you like working with parents, that is a plus, but it may not be necessary to work directly with parents in all environments. Parents can be more difficult than their children.
Pediatrics is a rich field and I encourage you to find out everything you can about it. Once you get out of school, keep taking classes to learn more about cognitive and motor development, reflexes, movement patterns, embryology, everything you can think of that contributes to the growth and development of a person.

Deborah R. recommends the following next steps:

be sure to get a clinical affiliation in pediatrics while you are in school
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Daniel’s Answer

To add on to what Renee answered. To become a Pediatric Physical Therapist, once you graduate from a Physical Therapy program, you will have to study and pass the boards. After that, you will be looking for a job. This is where you will want to look for Pediatric Physical Therapy jobs. These are typically associated with hospitals but there are some (but rare) private pediatric practices. Now, to better your odds of landing a job as a pediatric physical therapist, you can look into attending a 1-year residency in pediatrics after PT school. You will finish the program and will be eligible to sit for the board exam to become a Pediatric Specialist in Physical Therapy. That will definitely get you a leg up during the hiring process in landing a job as a pediatric physical therapist.
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