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- Nov 6, 2013
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Hello everyone! I wish you luck with your applications this year! I have been in PT school for a year now and I wanted to share some advice that I wish someone would have shared with me beforehand.
1. Buy this textbook and read it: Physical Rehabilitation [6th edition] by O'Sullivan, Schmitz, & Fulk
So far, almost my entire first year of physical therapy school can be summed up in this textbook (other than anatomy, which is its own beast). What this means for you is that if you have a month or two break between graduating from a 4-year school and starting graduate school, you can skim through this book and it will set you up for major success in your courses. This book has been invaluable for my orthopedics classes, neuro classes, for understanding gait, motor control, how to perform exams, etc. Plus it has lots of specific information for various conditions and patient populations. On Amazon, people call this the "PT Bible" for good reason.
2. Study origins, insertions, actions, and innervations before you get to PT school. I only studied a few before going to PT school and it was a HUGE mistake that set me pretty far behind in my anatomy course. Find a good muscle chart to keep yourself organized and learn them in their entirety, but make sense of the material. If you know where the muscles attach, you should be able to figure out the actions without memorizing them. Repeat after me: "All muscles know how to do is shorten." - this will help you determine their actions. I recommend PT Central's muscle charts because they are cleanly-laid out, and the full version on the PDFs are $3.00: You can see a sample below. I got mine here.
3. Develop a system of how you would like to organize your notes, not just for when in school, but to refer to easily during clinical rotations and as a clinician. I didn't start doing this until my third term, and I wish I would have begun sooner. You will be learning tons of "basic" information, such as OIANs (on the above muscle chart), Manual muscle tests, muscle length tests, special tests, joint mobilizations, sensory testing, etc. for every joint and every part of the human body, so you need to get it organized during your first time, and add to only a few documents, instead of having 50 different word docs or notebooks full of information, which will be a nightmare to search through when you need to find information.
When it comes to anatomy, make a muscle chart like the one I recommended above. For musculoskeletal testing and interventions, make a word document (or separate spiral notebook) called "Shoulder" or "Knee" and fill it with everything you are learning about. I included an example of mine below:
Do the same for your neuro classes to keep track of pertinent information, common disorders, and how to conduct a typical neurological exam. Also, keep track of exercise progressions for common conditions (not to use as a cookie-cutter approach), but to organize your thoughts while you are learning hundreds of interventions for common conditions.
A side-note about my note-taking: I learn by reading and writing...and then re-writing my notes. I like paper notes (not typing on the computer), but I made the switch from paper notes to Word documents between my second and third terms and it has helped me tremendously to keep my notes organized because I can easily add information to them from multiple classes. Almost all of our professors give us PDF versions of the lectures, so I use a PDF annotator like Xodo Docs (which is free and I LOVE it) to take notes during class, then when I study I go back and type my notes in my own words into a Word document, like the ones I mentioned above. Word docs are easily to find information in a pinch and I can keep adding information to it as I progress through courses. The document in the screenshot above has information from the following courses: anatomy, biomechanics, therapeutic exercise I & II, musculoskeletal orthopedics, and a little bit from neuro and other courses.
4. Have self-control. I deleted all of my social media apps on my phone during my second and third terms because I am a "scroller" (and do not have self-control when it comes to social media). I will procrastinate and scroll through apps instead of studying when I don't want to, so they had to go.
5. Start a facebook group, google drive, and quizlet account for your PT class to add information to, and don't be greedy: share your study guides, textbooks, and flashcards with your classmates. Our class shares EVERYTHING with each other because we genuinely want to everyone in our class to succeed.
6. Lastly, do something fun before you start PT school. I went on a road trip with my husband the week before I started school and it was amazing, and it was perfect for me to start school in the right state of mind.
I hope this helps! You are going to learn so much information that it will make your head spin...for three years straight...but hopefully you'll start off on the right foot to set yourself up for success.
If you have additional advice, please post to help others out!
1. Buy this textbook and read it: Physical Rehabilitation [6th edition] by O'Sullivan, Schmitz, & Fulk
So far, almost my entire first year of physical therapy school can be summed up in this textbook (other than anatomy, which is its own beast). What this means for you is that if you have a month or two break between graduating from a 4-year school and starting graduate school, you can skim through this book and it will set you up for major success in your courses. This book has been invaluable for my orthopedics classes, neuro classes, for understanding gait, motor control, how to perform exams, etc. Plus it has lots of specific information for various conditions and patient populations. On Amazon, people call this the "PT Bible" for good reason.
2. Study origins, insertions, actions, and innervations before you get to PT school. I only studied a few before going to PT school and it was a HUGE mistake that set me pretty far behind in my anatomy course. Find a good muscle chart to keep yourself organized and learn them in their entirety, but make sense of the material. If you know where the muscles attach, you should be able to figure out the actions without memorizing them. Repeat after me: "All muscles know how to do is shorten." - this will help you determine their actions. I recommend PT Central's muscle charts because they are cleanly-laid out, and the full version on the PDFs are $3.00: You can see a sample below. I got mine here.
3. Develop a system of how you would like to organize your notes, not just for when in school, but to refer to easily during clinical rotations and as a clinician. I didn't start doing this until my third term, and I wish I would have begun sooner. You will be learning tons of "basic" information, such as OIANs (on the above muscle chart), Manual muscle tests, muscle length tests, special tests, joint mobilizations, sensory testing, etc. for every joint and every part of the human body, so you need to get it organized during your first time, and add to only a few documents, instead of having 50 different word docs or notebooks full of information, which will be a nightmare to search through when you need to find information.
When it comes to anatomy, make a muscle chart like the one I recommended above. For musculoskeletal testing and interventions, make a word document (or separate spiral notebook) called "Shoulder" or "Knee" and fill it with everything you are learning about. I included an example of mine below:
Do the same for your neuro classes to keep track of pertinent information, common disorders, and how to conduct a typical neurological exam. Also, keep track of exercise progressions for common conditions (not to use as a cookie-cutter approach), but to organize your thoughts while you are learning hundreds of interventions for common conditions.
A side-note about my note-taking: I learn by reading and writing...and then re-writing my notes. I like paper notes (not typing on the computer), but I made the switch from paper notes to Word documents between my second and third terms and it has helped me tremendously to keep my notes organized because I can easily add information to them from multiple classes. Almost all of our professors give us PDF versions of the lectures, so I use a PDF annotator like Xodo Docs (which is free and I LOVE it) to take notes during class, then when I study I go back and type my notes in my own words into a Word document, like the ones I mentioned above. Word docs are easily to find information in a pinch and I can keep adding information to it as I progress through courses. The document in the screenshot above has information from the following courses: anatomy, biomechanics, therapeutic exercise I & II, musculoskeletal orthopedics, and a little bit from neuro and other courses.
4. Have self-control. I deleted all of my social media apps on my phone during my second and third terms because I am a "scroller" (and do not have self-control when it comes to social media). I will procrastinate and scroll through apps instead of studying when I don't want to, so they had to go.
5. Start a facebook group, google drive, and quizlet account for your PT class to add information to, and don't be greedy: share your study guides, textbooks, and flashcards with your classmates. Our class shares EVERYTHING with each other because we genuinely want to everyone in our class to succeed.
6. Lastly, do something fun before you start PT school. I went on a road trip with my husband the week before I started school and it was amazing, and it was perfect for me to start school in the right state of mind.
I hope this helps! You are going to learn so much information that it will make your head spin...for three years straight...but hopefully you'll start off on the right foot to set yourself up for success.
If you have additional advice, please post to help others out!
