Physical Therapist

This week, we met a Physical Therapist named Janel Featherstone.   She works in a rehab center.  She has worked with people ages six months to 105 years old.

Physical Therapy is a health care specialty involved with evaluating, diagnosing, and treating disorders of the musculoskeletal system.  A physical therapist is a healthcare professional who diagnoses and treats people of all ages that have medical problems or injuries that limit their mobility and ability to perform activities as well as they would like.

She needs to come up with treatment plans for what will happen to the patient.  Parts of the plan are exercise, range of motion, mobility training, pain management, and education.  They also come up with goals to get them to be able to do what they want to do.  Most patients that come in have problems with their bones or muscles.  Then they have to do a lot of exercises.

The kinds of equipment that she uses include: therapeutic ultra sounds, electrodes, heat, cold, and electricity.  There is also a pull up bar that she uses to help her patients get up from a bed, couch, or chair. There are many different tools in the rehab center.

There are good things and bad things. The good includes having a patient be able to do things that he/she wants to do and having a patient go home without pain and being able to move around.  The bad includes paperwork, weeks and weeks of exercising with the patients, and not being able to see a patient get better.

This career would be a great job to do.  We can help someone be able to do things that they couldn’t do without our help.  We would be ecstatic to be able to make a patient feel better.  We would love to see their face when they can go home.

           

Overall this job is a great job.  You can help people and make a difference every day.             

Written by: Abby , Jenna , Bryn,  and Franki