What Does it Take to be a Pelvic Floor Therapist?

No two therapists in any specialty are alike, but the difference can be even more staggering in the world of pelvic floor. Read on to find out why.

Most pelvic floor therapists are physical therapists (PTs) by background but more and more occupational therapists (OTs) are getting into the field. The difference can start right here. A lot of people are unsure what makes a PT a PT and same for an OT. For most simplicity, PTs focus on helping you get from one place to another. They work on walking, balance, strengthening, getting in and out of bed, rehabbing after surgery or injury in the arms and legs.

Occupational Therapists in comparison work on helping you take care of yourself in your environment. They focus on upper extremity (arm) range of motion to wash your hair, bathe yourself, have the standing stamina to prepare of meal, and assess cognition to ensure you understand how to safely do all of the things you need to do take care of yourself. I like to also give a shoutout to all my OTs friends that I tell people OTs are the creative ones 😀 They recognize a person has a challenge to complete a daily task and they can almost certainly find the solution to maximize the person’s independence.

As you can see, the world of pelvic floor can easily overlap these two different perspectives of therapy. Physical therapy in the sense of strengthening, addressing muscle imbalances, and pressure management. Occupational therapy in the regard of maximizing independence with activities of daily living (bathroom needs, taking care of children without incontinence) and so on.

Since I am a PT by background, I am going to talk just a little bit more about the difference in training since it’s what I know. When I was in PT school about 9 years ago, we talked about the pelvic floor as part of our orthopedic class for about 2 hours and read 1 research article on it. That was it! That was not nearly enough education! I hear some programs now spend additional time on the pelvic floor discussion but I cannot fully speak to which ones. The main reason, the pelvic floor isn’t a significant topic on the national board exam that students need to take in order to get licensed.

In comparison, learning about more general ortho topics such as knee pain, back pain, or shoulder injuries are tested in higher quantity of questions on the board exam so therefore, you learn more in school. You have to take a clinical rotation in outpatient orthopedics to learn hands on skills in depth prior to graduation as well. Could this clinical experience have some pelvic floor included? Possibly, but this would definitely be the minority.

So how does one become trained to treat pelvic floor conditions? We have to take continuing education courses to learn. We basically build our pelvic floor education, oftentimes taking the courses that interest us the most. I would say there’s a pretty common “foundational” group of classes that most pelvic floor therapists take to learn basic pelvic floor diagnoses and how to perform an internal assessment, but there is no requirement to take these prior to treating. There are a few specialty exams to take to get more initials behind your name but this is also not a requirement to treat the pelvic floor population.

Since there is no direct path from PT school to the pelvic floor clinic and therapists have to build their own knowledge base through continuing education, I believe that this causes the most diverse therapy approach. Is it wrong? No, but I do wish that more schools would spend more time on educating therapists about the pelvic floor.

Understanding the training behind becoming a pelvic floor therapist is important to share with the public. If you have tried pelvic floor therapy with one therapist and didn’t quite see the results you were looking for or didn’t fully jive with your therapist, another pelvic floor therapist might approach your symptoms from a completely different view point.

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Keep following along for tips, trick, and pelvic floor tidbits.