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Health Professions

Physical Therapy Education at Washington University

The development of the profession of physical therapy at Washington University Medical Center began in 1915 with the establishment of a Physiotherapy Department by Dr. Frank Henry Ewerhardt. During the First World War Ewerhardt trained medical officers in physical therapy techniques. Physical education graduates and nurses were trained as physiotherapy aides for service in army hospitals. After the war several universities and civilian hospitals established baccalaureate and certificate training programs for physical therapists. Efforts in the early 1930s to establish a program at Washington University did not come to fruition, though a program was established at St. Louis University in 1933.

In 1940 the Committee on Physical Therapy of the National Research Council in Washington, D.C. appealed to medical institutions to aid it in “securing properly trained physical therapist technicians for the general hospitals of the Army during a national emergency.” Under the auspices of Barnes Hospital, a training school was established in 1942. The Barnes Hospital School for Physical Therapy Technicians offered a nine-month certificate program, consisting of six months of lectures, demonstrations and laboratory classes, and three months of clinical training. Dr. Ewerhardt served as the program’s medical director. Six women and one man enrolled in the first class. However, subsequent classes were open to women only. The American Medical Association’s Council on Medical Education and Hospital extended full approval of the Barnes Hospital School for Physical Therapy Technicians in June 1942.

By the time the second class of students enrolled, several of the original medical faculty members had been inducted into the armed services. Beatrice Schulz, a former occupational therapist who had been a member of the first graduating class of the Barnes training school, was appointed chief therapist of the Clinical department and Technical Director of the School. In 1946 the course of instruction was lengthened to one year – nine months of theory and three months of clinical training. The full-time faculty consisted of Dr. Ewerhardt, Beatrice Schulz, Margaret Clare, Dorothy Devendorf, and Helen Hart. All four women were graduates of the Barnes School.

In 1948 the school changed from a certificate program to a baccalaureate program in the Washington University School of Medicine’s Division of Auxiliary Medical Services. The Washington University Program in Physical Therapy combined a two-year pre-professional liberal arts curriculum with two years of professional curriculum and clinical training. At the time the maximum enrollment was 12 students, though admission was no longer restricted to women only. As the program expanded and the department moved to larger facilities, enrollment increased. The baccalaureate program was discontinued in 1988 and replaced by a professional master’s degree. That degree was replaced in 2001 by the three-year professional Doctorate of Physical Therapy (DPT) degree. In addition, the Washington University School of Medicine’s Program in Physical Therapy also offers a post-professional, clinical doctorate in Physical Therapy and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Movement Science.

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