- Hey, I'm Danielle with "Careers That Work."

Let's get the scoop on what it's like to be a physical therapist.

- What I live by, a moniker is motion is lotion.

Being still makes you ill. You're looking good, man.

Keeping your head level, you're not getting dizzy, your neck's moving a little bit better, right?

I've been a physical therapist for 33 years and this is my passion.

I love what I do.

It's awesome.

(bright music) I see a lot of back and neck injuries.

That's the most common injury that a person would go to the doctor for, for musculoskeletal problems.

Shoulders come in third.

I'm actually working the nerves in her arm.

This is the area that I specialize in.

She has a nerve injury up in this area that if we release the tissue up off the nerve, she gets movement out of her arm.

All right.

Carry on with what you're doing.

You're doing great.

Okay, all right.

It's exciting.

We get to solve problems.

We're like detectives.

We're musculoskeletal sleuths, if you want to call us that.

Let's go for it.

You ready?

Getting the arms swing down.

- Yep.

Yeah?

- And swing those arms.

That's key, right?

So we found that as people age out and they have trouble walking, they tend to stop swinging their arms.

So we can take individuals that their balance is off, just get them back in sync and their balance improves dramatically.

It's really cool.

I got a chance to really spend time with my patients and see how much I could change their lives.

Nose over your knees.

One hand, you can even push on one leg and one on the chair and just come up that way.

- Look at that.

- Good job.

- That was all you, man.

That was all you.

- They took elderly gentlemen they found in nursing homes that were stuck in wheelchairs, and they found there was nothing wrong with them.

They just stopped getting out of the chair.

They gave them this exercise and all of them were able to walk and get out of the chair and go.

I fell into it by accident.

I always wanted to be a cardiothoracic surgeon.

I had to pick a major in school to go on to med school.

I looked into it, looked great.

So I chose that for my pre-med major.

(gentle music) I got accepted into physical therapy school.

When I started doing my clinical rotations for physical therapy, I fell in love with it and never looked back.

Over the whole course of the 33 years, there's never ever been a time when physical therapists were not in demand.

As a profession, the sky is the limit.

Be as busy or as kind of low key as you want.

You could have a job where you worked in a school system and you had summers off.

You can work in a clinic where you're nine to five.

My positions, I purposely do not work any weekends.

If you wanna work with athletes, through those connections, I take on challenging cases from the NFL.

The bigger the challenge, the greater the reward.

And you see patients' lives change right in front of you.

Motion is lotion, buddy.

Being still makes you ill. Keep going.

- So what did you think?

Can you envision yourself in this career path?

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