Skills
Physical Therapist Assistant Skills & Tools
The technical skills, people skills and tools employers look for in physical therapist assistants, and how to build and show them.
Physical Therapist Assistants need technical skills such as therapeutic exercise, gait and transfer training, and modalities application, plus people skills like encouragement and motivation and patience. They also use tools such as Gait belts and parallel bars and Walkers, canes and crutches.
Technical (hard) skills
- Therapeutic exercise
- Gait and transfer training
- Modalities application
- Patient guarding and safety
- SOAP note documentation
- Basic data collection (ROM, strength, balance)
People (soft) skills
- Encouragement and motivation
- Patience
- Clear instruction
- Teamwork with the PT
Tools, equipment and technology
- Gait belts and parallel bars
- Walkers, canes and crutches
- Resistance bands and weights
- Treadmills and exercise bikes
- Electrical stimulation and ultrasound units
- Goniometers
Skills in action: common tasks
These step-by-step guides show how physical therapist assistants put their skills to work:
- How to guard a patient during gait training
- How to teach a home exercise program
- How to write a SOAP note
How to show these skills on a resume
- Lead your skills section with the technical skills from the job posting, for example, “Therapeutic exercise” and “Gait and transfer training.”
- Prove soft skills with results: instead of listing “encouragement and motivation,” describe a situation where you used it.
- List credentials such as State PTA license or certification near the top, with the issuing organization and date.
- Use the employer’s vocabulary. Our physical therapist assistant glossary covers the terms hiring managers expect.
How to build these skills
Formal training, supervised practice and certification are the most direct routes. Our Physical Therapist Assistant training introduces each of these skills with plain-language lessons, procedures and a final knowledge check: a strong foundation before hands-on training or your first day.