Top 12 Physical Therapy Assistant Skills to Put on Your Resume
In the competitive field of physical therapy, assistants who present a broad, practical skill set rise quickly. Blend technical know-how with calm bedside presence. Show you can adapt, think on your feet, and work shoulder-to-shoulder with patients and the team. That combination speaks loud.
Physical Therapy Assistant Skills
- Patient Care
- Rehabilitation Techniques
- Manual Therapy
- Therapeutic Exercise
- Gait Training
- Ultrasound Therapy
- Electrical Stimulation
- Aquatic Therapy
- Kinesiology Tape
- Range of Motion
- Documentation Skills
- HIPAA Compliance
1. Patient Care
Patient care, for a Physical Therapy Assistant, means carrying out the plan of care set by the physical therapist while protecting safety, easing pain, coaching through movement, and keeping patients informed and comfortable from start to finish.
Why It's Important
Strong patient care builds trust, improves adherence, reduces risk, and drives better outcomes. When patients feel heard and safe, they try harder—and recover faster.
How to Improve Patient Care Skills
Leveling up patient care takes attention, humility, and repetition.
Sharpen communication: Use plain language, confirm understanding, and adjust your cueing to match learning styles. Listen first. Speak second.
Master safety: Guard assist levels, body mechanics, transfer technique, gait belt use—treat them like non‑negotiables.
Use evidence: Follow clinic protocols and current guidelines. Ask the PT for rationales. Know why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Show empathy: Validate pain and fear. Celebrate small wins. Patients move more when they feel supported.
Close the loop: Check vitals, monitor symptoms, and report changes quickly. Document what you see so care stays tight and coordinated.
Small habits compound. Consistency beats flash.
How to Display Patient Care Skills on Your Resume
2. Rehabilitation Techniques
Rehabilitation techniques include therapeutic exercise, task-specific training, neuromuscular re‑education, manual work, and appropriate use of modalities and assistive devices to restore function, cut pain, and prevent further impairment.
Why It's Important
These tools rebuild capacity. They turn goals into steps, and steps into independence.
How to Improve Rehabilitation Techniques Skills
Keep learning: Pursue continuing education, in‑services, and case reviews. Ask to observe complex cases. Build range and depth.
Think function: Tie every drill to a real task—stairs, transfers, reaching, lifting. Patients buy in when goals feel real.
Progress with purpose: Adjust load, volume, and complexity based on response. Track metrics. Advance when earned; pull back when needed.
Coordinate care: Sync with PTs, OTs, SLPs, nursing. Shared plans reduce mixed messages and speed progress.
Reflect and refine: After sessions, note what worked, what stalled, and why. Then tweak the next session.
How to Display Rehabilitation Techniques Skills on Your Resume
3. Manual Therapy
Manual therapy uses hands-on techniques—soft tissue mobilization, joint mobilizations within scope, and assisted stretching—to reduce pain, improve motion, and prepare tissues for movement.
Why It's Important
It can quickly lower irritability and open a window for exercise. Less pain, better motion, more buy‑in.
How to Improve Manual Therapy Skills
Train deliberately: Seek supervised practice and targeted continuing education. Precision beats force.
Know indications and precautions: Screen red flags. Respect post‑op protocols and tissue healing timelines.
Refine touch: Develop graded pressure, pacing, and hand placement. Patient feedback is gold—use it constantly.
Pair with exercise: Follow manual work with active movement to lock in gains.
Protect yourself: Maintain body mechanics and hand care to avoid provider strain.
How to Display Manual Therapy Skills on Your Resume
4. Therapeutic Exercise
Therapeutic exercise restores strength, mobility, endurance, balance, and motor control with planned, progressive activity tailored to the individual and their goals.
Why It's Important
Movement is the engine of rehab. It rebuilds capacity and confidence, often with durable results.
How to Improve Therapeutic Exercise Skills
Individualize: Match dosage to the person—sets, reps, rest, tempo. One size fits no one.
Coach clearly: Short cues. Demonstrate. Use tactile and visual feedback. Quality before quantity.
Progress systematically: Manipulate load, complexity, and context. Track pain, RPE, and functional markers.
Foster adherence: Build simple, realistic home programs. Remove friction. Celebrate consistency.
Blend strength and control: Combine mobility work with stability and motor learning for changes that stick.
How to Display Therapeutic Exercise Skills on Your Resume
5. Gait Training
Gait training teaches safer, more efficient walking. It blends analysis, cueing, strengthening, balance, device use, and task practice on varied surfaces and speeds.
Why It's Important
Walking well restores freedom—fewer falls, more endurance, better access to daily life.
How to Improve Gait Training Skills
Assess first: Watch from multiple angles. Note step length, symmetry, cadence, path deviation, and compensations.
Strengthen what matters: Prioritize hips, calves, trunk control, and foot/ankle mechanics.
Dial in devices: Fit and train with canes, crutches, or walkers correctly. Progress or wean as safety allows.
Challenge smart: Obstacles, dual tasking, speed changes, inclines, and different terrains—always with safety at the forefront.
Feedback loops: Use mirrors, metronomes, or simple video. Immediate feedback sharpens motor learning.
How to Display Gait Training Skills on Your Resume
6. Ultrasound Therapy
Ultrasound therapy applies sound waves to tissues for thermal or mechanical effects aimed at easing pain and promoting healing when appropriate and prescribed.
Why It's Important
Used selectively, it may reduce irritability and prepare tissue for exercise. Evidence is mixed across conditions, so clinical reasoning and PT direction matter.
How to Improve Ultrasound Therapy Skills
Know the parameters: Understand frequency, intensity, duty cycle, and treatment time. Match settings to depth and goal.
Apply safely: Keep the head moving, use adequate coupling gel, and monitor patient sensation to avoid hotspots.
Screen thoroughly: Respect contraindications—over malignancy, impaired sensation, areas with electronic implants, thrombosis, or growing epiphyses where restricted.
Integrate: Follow with active work to reinforce gains. Document response and adjust next time.
Maintain equipment: Check calibration and cleanliness. A well‑kept unit is a safer unit.
How to Display Ultrasound Therapy Skills on Your Resume
7. Electrical Stimulation
Electrical stimulation delivers controlled electrical impulses for purposes like pain modulation, muscle re‑education, edema management, or strengthening when directed by the PT.
Why It's Important
It can reduce pain, wake up inhibited muscles, and complement active rehab.
How to Improve Electrical Stimulation Skills
Match the modality to the goal: Differentiate TENS, NMES, and IFC. Select waveforms and electrode setups appropriately.
Titrate parameters: Adjust intensity, frequency, pulse duration, and duty cycle to patient tolerance and therapeutic target.
Combine with movement: Pair NMES with task‑specific contractions to reinforce motor patterns.
Respect contraindications: Avoid use over pacemakers/implants, carotid sinus, active malignancy, impaired sensation, or open wounds unless specifically cleared.
Educate and monitor: Explain expected sensations. Watch skin response. Document outcomes and modify as needed.
How to Display Electrical Stimulation Skills on Your Resume
8. Aquatic Therapy
Aquatic therapy uses water’s buoyancy, resistance, and warmth to lower joint stress while building mobility, strength, and balance in a forgiving environment.
Why It's Important
It opens doors for patients who struggle on land—less pain, more motion, safer practice.
How to Improve Aquatic Therapy Skills
Prioritize safety: Screen for contraindications, watch entry/exit closely, and maintain clear supervision.
Program with intent: Use depth changes, water current, and equipment to scale difficulty without overloading joints.
Communicate clearly: Pool acoustics can be tricky. Use crisp cues and consistent gestures.
Bridge to land: Convert water gains into land‑based tasks as soon as tolerated for lasting carryover.
Track response: Monitor swelling, fatigue, and pain after sessions to fine‑tune dosage.
How to Display Aquatic Therapy Skills on Your Resume
9. Kinesiology Tape
Kinesiology tape is an elastic, breathable tape applied to influence proprioception, support soft tissue, manage mild swelling, and cue movement without locking joints down.
Why It's Important
It can reduce perceived pain, guide mechanics, and extend the impact of therapy between sessions. Evidence varies by condition—use thoughtfully.
How to Improve Kinesiology Tape Skills
Prep the skin: Clean, dry, and de‑oiled. Trim hair if needed for comfort and adhesion.
Choose the cut: I, Y, X, and fan strips each serve a purpose. Match the pattern to anatomy and goal.
Mind the tension: Most applications sit in the 10–50% range. Anchor ends with zero stretch to prevent peeling.
Place with purpose: Position the limb to pre‑stretch tissue, then lay the tape to cue or unload as intended.
Educate care: Rub to activate adhesive, avoid heat for a bit, and teach gentle removal to protect skin.
How to Display Kinesiology Tape Skills on Your Resume
10. Range of Motion
Range of Motion (ROM) is how far a joint moves through flexion, extension, and other planes. It’s a core measure and a core goal.
Why It's Important
Adequate ROM prevents stiffness, reduces compensations, and enables daily tasks—from tying shoes to looking over a shoulder.
How to Improve Range of Motion Skills
Gentle stretching: Use controlled, pain‑limited holds of 15–60 seconds, repeated as tolerated.
Active movement: Encourage patient‑driven ROM to build control within new ranges.
Joint and soft‑tissue work: Within scope and tolerance, apply mobilizations and soft‑tissue techniques to reduce barriers.
Strength at end range: Load new motion lightly to make it usable and durable.
Heat and recovery: Heat may ease entry into motion; ice or gentle movement can calm symptoms after. Monitor response.
How to Display Range of Motion Skills on Your Resume
11. Documentation Skills
Documentation skills mean recording evaluations, interventions, patient responses, and outcomes clearly, accurately, and on time in line with legal and professional standards.
Why It's Important
Good notes keep care coordinated, support reimbursement, reduce risk, and show progress. If it’s not documented, it didn’t happen.
How to Improve Documentation Skills
Follow the standard: Use your clinic’s templates and required elements—timing, coding, measurable goals, and objective data.
Be clear and concise: Plain language, relevant facts, fewer fillers. Paint the picture without clutter.
Measure and compare: Include vitals, ROM, strength grades, gait metrics, and functional scores when applicable.
Document safety: Note precautions, assist levels, and patient education provided.
Proof and improve: Review for accuracy and completeness. Ask for feedback to tighten your charting.
How to Display Documentation Skills on Your Resume
12. HIPAA Compliance
HIPAA compliance means safeguarding protected health information—paper, digital, spoken—by following privacy and security rules every time you handle patient data.
Why It's Important
It protects patients, preserves trust, and prevents costly breaches and penalties.
How to Improve HIPAA Compliance Skills
Know the rules: Understand what counts as PHI, minimum necessary use, and when disclosures are allowed.
Secure the basics: Strong passwords, locked screens, clean desks, and controlled access to records.
Communicate safely: Verify identities, avoid public spaces for sensitive discussions, and use approved channels for ePHI.
Report quickly: If a breach or near‑miss occurs, follow the clinic’s incident process immediately.
Update often: Complete regular training and refreshers. Policies evolve; so should your habits.
How to Display HIPAA Compliance Skills on Your Resume
