What is Pediatric Physical Therapy?
When graduating from a doctor of physical therapy program, you enter the career field as an entry-level generalized PT. As an entry-level therapist, you are taught to work with all ages and diagnoses can range from orthopedic to neurologic to developmental. Pediatric physical therapy is a specialized area of physical therapy that focuses on improving the motor skills, strength, balance, endurance, and coordination of infants, children, adolescents and young adults up to 21 years of age. Pediatric PTs treat all the same things that regular physical therapists treat—only in a smaller, still-developing body. Pediatric PT patients can have any type of movement disorder, developmental delay, or orthopedic condition. An entry-level therapist can choose to work in the pediatric setting to build that specialty, as well as, can choose to become board certified in pediatrics.
The fun part of pediatric PT is that PTs must be proficient in neurology, orthopedics, and developmental delays (incorporating almost all your school knowledge) in addition to being a highly skilled physical therapy practitioner with endless amounts of patience, compassion, and creativity. People think physical therapy is just for injuries, but pediatric physical therapy is more focused on “habilitation” meaning help attain or keep a skill rather than “rehabilitation” regaining a skill that may have been lost due to injury.
What do pediatric physical therapists do?
Pediatric PTs engage kids with fun, age-appropriate games and activities to keep them motivated and happy. Sessions should look and feel like play—running and hopping around to improve coordination, playing on large exercise balls to build strength, standing on a balance beam or on one foot for stability—but physical therapy can be hard work ... for both the therapist, parent, and the patient.
Depending on the age, development, attention of the child and area you are working (strength, balance, motor planning), the PT has to get creative and come up with a play activity that will get the child to simulate the intended movement. For example, blowing bubbles and challenging the child to pop them by kicking her legs straight up in the air or kicking a ball into a goal to do straight leg raises; reaching for and placing rings on a cone to do sit-ups. Often it includes music—existing songs or making up your own—to encourage a movement. Sometimes it means coming up with 50 different games in a 45-minute session.
The best thing about pediatric PT? Working with kids, who put a smile on your face and keep you on your toes with the things they say and do. Pediatric PTs make a huge impact not just on the child’s life and abilities, but on the family’s, too. By helping a child gain independence through safe movement, you’ll improve the quality of life for mom, dad, brother, and sister as well as for the patient.
Why does my child need PT?
Some common signs that a kid might need a PT evaluation would be toe walking, frequent falls, head tilt or tendency to only look in one direction, neglect or weakness of one side of the body compared to the other, or inability to keep their trunk/head in midline.
It could be they have a medical diagnosis, genetic disorder, or developmental delay that requires additional support to reach age-appropriate gross motor milestones. And the most common reason associated with physical therapy would be if they have an injury.
How does outpatient PT differ from early intervention (home health) or inpatient (hospital) PT?
For a PT in a hospital setting, your patients typically vary day to day, and sometimes there isn’t much carryover. Both early intervention and outpatient PT, the therapist sees the same patients weekly and works with the patient, often for six months plus, so in each session, we are building on the skills from the previous session! Early intervention and outpatient PTs also don’t have immediate access to other healthcare professionals (other PTs, OTs, SLPs, physicians, PAs, NPs, etc.) as if they were working in a hospital. If they have a question or concern for another provider, you have to squeeze it in your downtime to contact them. Outpatient PT patients are also typically more medically stable (require less medical equipment).
