Count as Observation hours??

[collegestudent0717]

Hello, I recently applied/heard back from an unpaid internship at a pediatric therapy clinic. It's for pre-PT students & includes involvement in physical therapies/workouts with the kids while a physical therapist is there. Would this be logged as observation hours on PTCAS?

Also, on this website I've seen many people list hundreds of observation hours. Is this necessary? I believe I'll have 100+ by the time applications open and I'm getting stressed!

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[PTGalPaL]

Yes this would count as observation hours! And while the hundreds of hours isn't technically necessary ( I applied with 450+) It is a major factor. However, I have also heard that some programs like to see wide variety of experiences vs large amounts of hours.
I would recommend reaching out to those programs you're most interested in and just asking for more specifics on their observation hours requirements! .

 

[ya1]

Will definitely count as observation hours.
Different programs have different requirements for observation hours. Some want 80 h, others 250. Some want at least 1 outpatient and 1 inpatient settings for observations, others do not care. I would not do more than 50-100h in pediatric setting. Better do about 50h in 3 different settings/clinics. Schools want you to be exposed to variety of settings to have a general understanding what PT is about; pediatric setting is a little bit too narrow to get too many hours in it.
If your program requires let's say 100 h of observation, you do not have to go far beyond those hours. I would not do more than 50 extra hours beyond the minimum requirement unless you have plenty of free time or are working in that kind of setting and so will get more hours anyway.

 

[preDPT78]

I think some people go pretty crazy with hours on this forum honestly. Focus on various experiences rather than quantity as long as you’re meeting the school’s minimum. The school I’m going to attend required 3 settings so I had a little over 100 hours from those 3 settings combined. You don’t need hundreds of hours unless it’s something that is emphasized by the school or you want to make up for something like a lower GRE score.

 

[collegestudent0717]

I think some people go pretty crazy with hours on this forum honestly. Focus on various experiences rather than quantity as long as you’re meeting the school’s minimum. The school I’m going to attend required 3 settings so I had a little over 100 hours from those 3 settings combined. You don’t need hundreds of hours unless it’s something that is emphasized by the school or you want to make up for something like a lower GRE score.

Okay thank you for saying that, I've read/heard to focus on settings but on this forum I felt that I was really lacking in my application just because I didn't have 1,000 hours as an aide in one place.

 

[ya1]

Okay thank you for saying that, I've read/heard to focus on settings but on this forum I felt that I was really lacking in my application just because I didn't have 1,000 hours as an aide in one place.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah... Unless you are WORKING there and making money, there is really no need to be there for a long time since you end up just standing there watching therapists doing more or less the same thing over and over and over again. You cannot participate in anything, so it gets pretty boring. The purpose of observation hours is to introduce you to a setting - that's it. 50h is plenty of time for that introduction.

 

[PTGalPaL]

Okay thank you for saying that, I've read/heard to focus on settings but on this forum I felt that I was really lacking in my application just because I didn't have 1,000 hours as an aide in one place.

Yeah... Unless you are WORKING there and making money, there is really no need to be there for a long time since you end up just standing there watching therapists doing more or less the same thing over and over and over again. You cannot participate in anything, so it gets pretty boring. The purpose of observation hours is to introduce you to a setting - that's it. 50h is plenty of time for that introduction.
[/QUOTE]

while I definitely agree that after about 50 hours it starts to get a little repetitive, I spoke to a person in admissions at a program that explained it to me as/being: while their requirement is only 50/75/100/whatever, the more hours you have the more you would be "dedicated" in a sense to the field, meaning they know you've seen more of what they do and have a better grasp of the day to day and would hopefully therefore be less likely to drop out or decide you didn't like the work halfway through. Now, that worries programs truthfully because it looks bad on them if they lose students halfway through, but still.
It's almost the same as looking at any kind of numeric requirement, like maybe they only "require" a 300 total GRE score, but wouldn't it look all the better to have a 305-310 total? Just my opinion though! There are plenty of other ways to make your application shine without excess hours!

 

[MilkExpirationDate]

Definitely adhere to the school's minimum required hours. But other than that, QUALITY over quantity. It's about the experience and what you learn. I know a guy who has easily over 1000 hours in just one setting (he's worked there for a while) but he didn't get in his first 2 tries because of other factors.