To start the week I found this video for helping lower back pain. Remember if you attend one of the physical therapy assistant programs that are available in all 50 states you would be putting a patient through these exercises.

In some of these videos you will see a physical therapist or a doctor of physical therapy working with the patient. In almost all instances if there is a physical therapy assistant available he or she will be working with the patient. The actual actions performed in these videos are what you’ll be learning as a physical therapy assistant. In actual fact you will probably become better at day-to-day interaction with the patient than the actual physical therapist. Just as you will find that a nurse draws blood better than a doctor you will find physical therapy assistants doing a better job working with patients and having them perform exercises, paraffin baths, electrical stimulation and all the other actions performed daily by physical therapy assistants. It all comes down to practice and repetition. As in nurse draws blood much more often than a doctor will she becomes much more proficient at doing it. The same holds true with the physical therapy assistant. So remember to picture yourself performing the tasks you see executed in the videos.

So check out today’s video and remember it will be you having the patient do these exercises.