what are some good strengths and experiences i may need or want to be a physical therapist?

Hellos,

The strength of any individual is their tolerance and patience level.

How much you become tolerant and add patience into you it will change the graph of your life.

I am also very much fond of music and whenever i get a chance i sang. And see I am not only a singer.

Struggle for whatever you want to become but never compromise self respect and you will achieve the best career industry.

Thank you.

For someone in high school, (I assume you're in high school) I'd recommend looking for experiences to involve yourself in healthcare. Most hospitals have volunteer programs, high schools have clubs, and you can always ask to shadow therapists/surgeons/physicians.

Qualities that make great therapists include patience, but more important is a willingness to connect with other people. Seek to build genuine relationships of trust, in rehabilitation it's called "therapeutic alliance", and consists of changing the relationship from being teacher-student to friends. When that happens, being "patient" isn't such a big deal because you're working together. Physical Therapy is unique as that it allows so much time with each patient you treat (between two and five hours weekly) that you really form close relationships with many of your patients.

This will address your comment that you are impatient. If that is so, the first way to deal with it is to know it and express it as you did. You have already started to think about your impatience. Once you really know you are impatient you can do something about it if you want to. Physical therapy is always done with a living being, person, horse, dog, etc. That is the aspect of patience I am going to talk about.

When I told people that I worked with young children who were blind and had multiple other disabilities the most frequent response I heard was, "You must be an angel," and, "You must be extremely patient." My rely was, "I could never be patient enough to do this work. If I had to be patient I couldn't do this job."

I never thought about being patient because I was always curious. I wanted to know about how the children I was treating felt, thought, what they wanted to do, what they were afraid of, if they had a cold, or if there was a problem in their family, and many, many other questions. My goal was to always be engaged with them in their learning process, which I found to be fascinating. So I never had to be patient, because I was always so involved with how to interest them in taking more responsibility for themselves, become more independent, grow up.

Progress was slow, but that made every attempt at doing something new very exciting. And when the child achieved mastery, learned to do something like climb the stairs - with or without my help - it was sometimes thrilling to the child, and then to me. I had one child who would loudly exclaim, "I did it!" when she was able to walk up a flight of stairs to see her teacher in the cafeteria. We celebrated together. Each achievement was exciting.

The cure for impatience is curiosity about the other person, involving yourself in their experience so you can approach their new experience together. Adjust the goal you have for them so you work with what they can and will do. If you get caught up in what you wish they could do, that is a recipe for frustration and impatience.

I am writing about the children I treated but this advice applies to almost every human interaction I can think of. Patience is required if you are waiting in a cafeteria line to get your food and have no one to talk to, or when you are bored waiting for the bus to come. It is not an issue if you are engaged, curious, and involved in what you are doing, whatever that might be.

There was an occupational therapist who worked at my school who was very impatient. A few times she interrupted my treatments because she was so focused on what she wanted me to do and was so frustrated with how I went about it that she took action to interrupt her frustration. Needless to say, I was very angry when she did that. So, "patience" comes more easily to some people than to others but you can cultivate it if you want to and you have already taken the first step in that direction.