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Release Date:

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

PTA Program Boasts New, State-of-the-art Facilities

HFC's Physical Therapist Assistant (PTA) program recently upgraded its lab facilities for the 2014-15 academic year in an effort to provide students with more resources and learning opportunities. As a result, students will become more effective providers of physical therapy services.

The program installed several new video monitors in the lab facility, along with five video cameras, which give a better view of demonstrations from several vantage points. This also provides the opportunity to record demonstrations and make these recordings available for repeated viewing.

“These upgrades provide a more efficient use of everyone’s time,” said Dr. Cynthia Scheuer, director of the HFC PTA program.

Established in 2005, the PTA program prepares students for employment as entry-level Physical Therapist Assistants. In addition to the classroom, students will have experiences in a laboratory setting and in local physical therapy facilities. In fact, students spend the final semester of the PTA program in full-time (40 hours/week) clinical externships, coordinated by Stephen Pedley, academic coordinator/clinical instructor in the PTA program. Students can complete their clinical externships at more than 80 clinical sites in Southeast Michigan, as well as in Traverse City.

The graduation rate for the PTA program since 2011 is 75 percent. The job placement rate for graduates of the PTA program since 2012 is 95 percent. Students must take the National Physical Therapy Exam (NPTE), the ultimate pass rate of which since 2011 has been 100 percent for HFC.

“As health care is moving toward more integrated functional outcomes and becomes more interdisciplinary, our goal is to make sure our students are equal to these outcomes and prepare them to be interdisciplinary professionals by the time they graduate,” said Scheuer.

For further information about the HFC PTA program, contact Scheuer at 313-317-6575 or via email cscheuer@hfcc.edu. You may also visit https://www.hfcc.edu/catalog/programs.