Physical Therapy Aide job description
297 verified openings in Allied Health & Therapy
Everything a physical therapy aide does is delegated. O*NET describes the job as selected or routine tasks performed under close supervision of a physical therapist or a physical therapy assistant, including prepping both the patient and the treatment area. The median was $35,240 for May 2025 across 48,150 aides, the bottom tenth under $25,360 and the top tenth over $47,780. The assistant role one rung up is a separate occupation on a separate BLS line, and it pays close to double.
Core Duties and Responsibilities
Cleaning and disinfecting equipment after treatment comes first, level with getting patients safely into or onto that equipment. Next: coaching people through exercises under a therapist's direction, watching how they respond and reporting it back, and administering manual therapeutic exercise, massage, or heat, light, sound, water, and electrical treatments such as ultrasound. Changing bed sheets and pillow cases counts for as much here as the therapy work does. Aides also move patients by wheelchair or with standing support, order supplies, answer the phone, and book appointments.
Common Skills and Technologies
Active listening, monitoring, service orientation, and social perceptiveness matter more here than anything technical, which in practice means watching a patient's face for pain while following someone else's instructions exactly. Epic Systems and MEDITECH are the medical software you will see named in these postings. The scheduling and the supply orders happen in whatever office software the clinic already owns.
Education, Training, and Career Path
A high school diploma gets you hired, and the training that follows is measured in months rather than years, learned next to staff who already do it. About a third of aides surveyed hold that diploma or the equivalent, a quarter an associate's degree, and one in ten never finished high school, so the route onto a clinical floor here is a short one. All of that is Job Zone Two on O*NET's five-point scale, some preparation needed. The step up, physical therapist assistant, is a two-year degree away.
Sources: O*NET 30.0, 31-2022.00 Physical Therapist Aides, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/31-2022.00. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 31-2022, https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes312022.htm.