Best Careers 2009: Physical Therapist

The rest of the day? It's a tough one: a child with cerebral palsy, a young mother whose shoulder was crushed in a car accident, an arthritis sufferer, a 75-year-old who had a hip replacement, and an Iraq veteran amputee.

Although you try to take care of each person's paperwork at the end of each patient's session, there's a growing amount, thanks to the new HIPAA privacy act and other government and insurer-mandated forms, so before you can go home, you spend another 30 minutes on paperwork.

You leave at 6 p.m. a little sore and a bit less upbeat but proud of what you do.

Smart Specialties

Amputees. The thought of dealing with amputees turns off many aspiring physical therapists, but for many, it turns out to be a particularly rewarding specialty. The desire to live as fully as possible, especially among younger patients, is inspiring. And you're helped by ever better prostheses, for example, a power knee that enables a person to walk with a fairly normal gait.

Learn more. The Orthopedic Section of the American Physical Therapy Association.

Sports physical therapy. Your main job is to speed athletes' recovery from an injury. You may work at a clinic or for an amateur or professional sports team. This niche is deservedly popular because of the high success rate and the many motivated clients.

Learn more: Sports Medicine Section of the American Physical Therapy Association.

An under-the-radar subniche: dancers. More than 80 percent of professional dancers will suffer some type of injury during their career; almost half report chronic pain caused by injuries. As a result, most professional dance companies have a physical therapist on staff.

Learn more: International Association of Dance Medicine and Science or the Performing Arts Special Interest Group of the American Physical Therapy Association

Salary Data

Median (with eight years in the field): $70,200

25th to 75th percentile (with eight or more years of experience): $66,000-$84,800

(Data provided by PayScale.com)

Training

Physical therapists need a master's degree from an accredited physical therapy program, but increasingly, the standard is a three-year doctor of physical therapy degree.

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• Department of Labor profile