Should I Include High School Shadowing

[em&m18]

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I volunteered in an outpatient sports physical therapy clinic for 150+ hours from 2015-2017, which was pretty instrumental in me deciding on PT. I got to ask a lot of questions, assist on some exercises, and built some good relationships. It was with a pretty big pediatric hospital - I have documentation from volunteer services, but I'm also sure I could get the hours verified by the PT's I worked with. I'd be applying to programs in AU 21. Am I able to count these hours on PTCAS, or are they from too long ago? If it wasn't such a big number of hours I wouldn't be considering.

 

[DPTEric]

As long as there is a licensed Physical Therapist available to sign off on your hours I don't think it would hurt to include them! Experience is experience and schools will value that.

 

[ya1]

I would guess a school may want your observation hours to be within the last 5 years, which should be ok since you did it until 2017. So definitely include those hours in your application. I also believe it would be a good idea for you to get more recent observations in a different setting. You can do 50-is hours now somewhere else. It's good to have observations in at least 2 different settings.