Undergrad volunteer internship exist?

[Northwesty]

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Hey gang, I am still attending a community college planning to transfer to a 4 year in WA to complete my degree. My question is this: Do some schools offer a summer(or schoolyear) volunteer/intership opportunity to gain valuable observation hours for physical therapy? Has anyone done or heard of anything like this? Also, would you suggest I called the school before acceptance to verify if the opportunities exist with such said school? Thank you!

 

[NeophyteParkour]

Yes, some schools do. A lot of them don't, as far as I can tell though. However, even if your school doesn't have it as part of a requirement for your major, you can probably arrange one through a professor.

You don't need to take this path though. That way will attach a grade to what you're doing, but it's not necessarily going to get you the best observational experience (though it can help, as like the user below said the weekly reports/projects are useful). All you need to do is walk into a physical therapy clinic and ask if they have any volunteer positions available. Have a resume ready (in case they ask for it). In my experience, you should pursue it like any other job, and if they are unsure at a certain time, call back/return a second time and ask again. Even if they just allow you to shadow for a day or a week, it will allow you to become more familiar with PT, and it's something you can add to your resume.

Also, I recommend starting as soon as possible. You don't want to wait until senior year (like I did ) and have to cram a ton of resume-building things in at once (though I somehow did it all succesfully).
Good luck!

 

[JRS69]

I majored in Exercise Science and we were required to do a 6 credit hour internship in a related field. So I got school credit and observation hours at the same time. It was really nice because I had to write weekly reports and a final report which helped me learn and remember even more. The PT I worked under also had to do a midterm and final evaluation on me. That was great because it let me know how the PT thought I was doing and what areas I could improve in. I was able to improve in all the areas that I didn't get a perfect rating and then I asked for an LOR for PT school and already knew that she loved me 🙂