Week 2 - Role of PTA

Question 1

What is a PTA defined by APTA?

Answer 1

“a technically educated health care provider who assists the PT in the provision of physical therapy”. A graduate of a CAPTE program. A PTA is the ONLY individual who is recognized by APTA to assist the PT in the delivery of selected pt interventions.

Question 2

Who is a patient?

Answer 2

an ind. who are recipients of pt intervention, examination, prognosis, who have a disease, disorder, condition, impairment, functional limitation or disability.

Question 3

who is a client?

Answer 3

an ind. who engages the services of a pt and who can benefit from consultation, interventions, professional advice, health promotion, fitness, wellness or prevention services. Example - ind receiving info from you/pt in a learning enviro…NOT getting a diagnosis

Question 4

general supervision

Answer 4

pt is not required to be physically present or on-site, must be available by telecommunication always

Question 5

direct supervision

Answer 5

pt must be physically present and immediately available always to both supervise and direct PTA in tasks related to patient/client management

Question 6

What can PTA do?

Answer 6

• initiate and perform selected interventions within POC
• insure patient/client is safe during all interventions
• compares initial eval w/current responses (headed to goals)
• reports to pt

Question 7

watt factors

Answer 7

• complexity of task, amount of “decision making vs doing” involved with task, risks involved
• criticality/stability of the patient and severity of the consequences if an error in task performance is made
• the purpose of the task in relation to treating the patient’s problem vs contributing to patient’s well being and satisfaction with overall provision of service.