Best physical therapy continuing education courses. A simple guide.

Choosing the best physical therapy continuing education courses isn't just about earning more CEUs; it's about enhancing your professional journey. Below is a straightforward, two-step process to help you pinpoint the perfect courses that align with your goals.

The best physical therapy continuing education courses are ones you can actually finish and apply in-clinic.

Step 1: Identify Your Professional Priorities.

What motivates you as a physical therapist? Are you looking to enhance your skills to increase your income? Do you want to acquire new clinical experiences to overcome boredom? Or is your main goal to improve patient outcomes because you are not satisfied with your current performance and believe you can do better?

Identifying your main driving force will help you narrow down the search for the ideal continuing education courses.

Want to Maximize Earnings? Focus on Specialization!

For those who prioritize income, specialized continuing education courses are essential. Developing skills in those areas can help you launch new hospital programs, establish unique cash-based practices, or negotiate higher salaries in clinics, which can greatly enhance your earning potential.

Take, for example, the rapidly growing field of men's pelvic health. Despite being a niche area, it attracts considerable interest. Currently, there is a scarcity of PTs with this particular specialization. Because the annual patient need is increasing, hospitals and clinics are starting to invest in this specialty to be able to serve their community.

Men suffering from pelvic issues - an underserved population who needs your help!

Now there are other niche PT specialties that can help you maximize earnings as well. At IPC, pelvic floor courses are what we specialize in and we focus on providing male pelvic health courses that are highly practical and fun.

But if that’s not a specialty you’re particularly interested in, you can use the following simple principle to determine if your chosen niche can help you maximize your earnings as a physical therapist. This principle is based on the law of supply and demand. 

Simply put, your speciality is more valuable if there’s a lot of demand for the type of services you offer but not a lot of PTs offer this type of service. 

Now there’s a small twist to that principle as well. If you want to maximize your income, you want to invest in a specialty where ideally there is growing demand and the population you can impact and help is large. 

For example, specializing in TMJ rehabilitation may not be very profitable. The demand for this service is not likely to grow because there are not many people with this condition.

But in life there are things that matter more than just monetary compensation, which leads us to our next point.

What’s the Impact You Want to Have? Purpose-Driven Learning. 

If making a significant impact drives you, then the best courses are those aligned with your personal sense of purpose. Impact is deeply personal; what you find fulfilling might differ from your peers. 

So it’s best to think about your inner why. What moves you as a physical therapist? Sometimes we’re so entrenched in our day to day that we never take the time to really reflect on that question. 

We spend at least 40 hours a week working, so why not find some joy in it? You don’t have to be head-over-heels passionate, but your work should give you a sense of purpose.

At IPC, many clinicians share their stories about why they started to specialize in male pelvic health. 

A dad once hindered by urinary incontinence, now dancing with his daughter, thanks to a pelvic clinician's help.

Some clinicians wanted to help their dad post-prostatectomy. Others started in female pelvic health first and men reached out desperate for help and the clinicians didn’t want to turn them down. So they decided to take pelvic floor courses and further specialize to help their community.

So, ask yourself: What impact do you want to make? Your answer can guide you in choosing the best physical therapy continuing education courses for you.

What’s your ideal lifestyle?

Some PTs want to travel around and do travel PT. Some want a lifestyle where they can finish work at 5PM and have a more stable lifestyle. 

A physical therapist travelling around in her Westfalia and doing travel PT.

The courses you choose for continuing your education and what kind of skills you develop will greatly influence the kind of lifestyle you can achieve.

For example, if you’re a PT who wants to finish work at 5PM, it might involve you running your own practice and deciding your own hours. If the kind of services you offer is in demand in your community, and you’re one of the only providers and deliver great services. You will have great patient buy-in and you will soon find yourself with a waiting list. 

And that’s how you can have better control over your work lifestyle. The more valuable your skills, the more you can dictate and set your conditions.

Want New Challenges? Intellectual Curiosity.

After a couple of years of practice some clinicians might feel bored intellectually because the cases they see now seem repetitive. If that’s your case, it might be a sign for you that it’s time to develop a new specialty. 

For PTs who thrive on challenging cases and intellectual stimulation, the best continuing education courses are those that keep you constantly engaged and learning. Advanced courses in complex specialties that push your clinical reasoning can provide the intellectual challenge you seek.

After pondering these four crucial questions to pinpoint the best physical therapy continuing education courses for you, the next step is to identify your learning style.

Step 2: Understand Your Learning Style.

It sounds obvious but it’s so important to identify your learning style because the best physical therapy continuing education courses you can take are the ones that you can actually finish and use the knowledge that you learned during the course, and being able to apply it in-clinic.

So if you know that you don’t learn well online, then looking for physical therapy continuing education in person would make the most sense. We know, we know, it can be a logistical headache to take days off, book the flights, the accommodations and making sure that everything is being taken care of at home. But powering through an intense one day or two-day course would be the way to go if you learn better in person.

Practicing with fellow physical therapists can make the learning experience more enjoyable.

Attending live ceu courses for physical therapy also offer the opportunity to connect with other physical therapists who are attending the course. The interactiveness during live courses and the ability to exchange with other participants and the instructors can make the learning experience much more enjoyable, and the information taught easier to digest.

But we believe the biggest factor that makes a physical therapy continuing education in person worth it is whether there is practical lab component during the course. That’s why at IPC we hire male models during the course and PTs can practice on real ‘patients’ instead of needing to practicing on each other, which can be uncomfortable and distracting for the overall learning experience especially for a pelvic floor course. If a course is more lecture and theory-based, then what’s the point of attending physical therapy continuing education in person?

Now that said, online courses offer great advantages as well! If you know that you learn well at your own-pace following online courses, because your schedule is more hectic and you need the ability to stop and go, then online courses would probably be the best option for you.

All of this might seem like pretty obvious information but sometimes it’s hard for us to be realistic with ourselves, and we force ourselves to take courses that don’t fit our learning style. And we end up just wasting our time and money because we didn’t absorb much from the course or we just didn’t finish the course…

At IPC, we offer both in person CEUs and online long format and short format courses as well as mentorship through the Pelvic Tribe. Our goal is for clinicians to really be able to succeed in applying what they learn in the courses. We believe it’s important for courses to be fun and practical because let’s be honest, we all have been to courses where it was very theoretical and dry, and that’s the last thing we want people to experience.

If you’re interested in starting in male pelvic health, you can go to our free resources page where you’ll find free continuing education courses for physical therapy specialists who want to specialize in male pelvic health.

Tailor Your Path.

As physical therapists, choosing the right continuing education courses can help us advance our careers, leading to increased financial rewards and a more satisfying workplace. While not everyone is driven by these incentives, the majority of clinicians want to optimize for at least one of the following: income, purpose, lifestyle and intellectual stimulation. It’s good to think a bit about what really matters to us and what we want to optimize for.

That said, when choosing the best physical therapy continuing education courses, it's also important to consider your own learning style and preferences. If you thrive in a classroom setting and enjoy hands-on activities, looking for live CEU courses for physical therapy may be the best fit for you. It’s true that in person physical therapy continuing education require more commitment because of the planning required to attend a live course but it can be more rewarding. On the other hand, if you prefer the convenience of learning from the comfort of your own home and have a busy schedule, online could be the way to go.

By taking the time to research and explore different options, you can find a continuing education course that not only meets your professional requirements but also brings you personal fulfillment and satisfaction. So, don't be afraid to explore different avenues and find the right path for your continuing education journey. Happy learning!