Physical Therapy Assistants are in demand around the world. They make up over 60,000 jobs through the workforce of the world. The tasks they must complete cover a wide variety of activities all while helping other people achieve more in their daily life. They help people to recover from serious injury and from illnesses.

While it is true that physical therapy assistants do perform all the work that a therapist will do, they do a lot of the work and help their therapist out immensely. The people that physical therapy assistants help have been injured in an accident or as a result of a disabling illness. The assistants can provide assistance in the form of teaching new exercises, giving massages, and keeping a record of what the therapist finds while examining the patients.

There are very specific guidelines and requirements that are needed to become physical therapy assistants. Most states require an associate degree which can be achieved through a physical therapy assistant program.

When it comes to choosing a program for you to educate yourself with, you have two specific choices. You can choose an online program or you can choose a campus program where you attend classes at a school on their property. The biggest difference between the two types of programs is convenience. With an online program, you are able to take your classes in your spare time from your own home. This is particularly nice if you are taking classes while you are working a full time job.

In the physical on-campus classes, the student will have more work and will also receive hands on training in a clinic so there are benefits to this type of class as well. If you choose an online class, you may not receive full training in your clinical setting. You will receive enough credits to allow you to become a certified physical therapy assistant but you may not have the actual practice as your competitors when it comes to applying for a job.

One other factor that should be mentioned is that some schools (both online and campus) will claim to be an accredited school while they are not. The only way to determine for sure if a school is accredited is to check with your regional accrediting agency to see if a given school is accredited.

Michael Morales is the program director for Vital Ethics. Vital Ethics provides health care career information and basic and advanced life support certification programs.