Pediatric Physical Therapy Documentation Book

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In 2020, I self-published a book on Amazon with my colleague and fellow PT, Katlin Middleton, called The Pediatric Exercise Handbook: A Developmental How To for Parents and Clinicians. Since it’s launch in February 2020, it sells an average of 60-70 copies a month on autopilot.

That experience taught me two things:

Self-publishing on Amazon takes a lot of guts, courage, and googling for answers but is not actually that hard
I could and would absolutely do this again.

Since then, I have taken on the world of children’s book self-publishing with a book called “The Boy and The Boomerang: An Adventure in Haiku,” hiring an illustrator from The Republic of Georgia off Fiverr and most recently wrote, edited, and self-published The Ultimate Guide to Pediatric Physical Therapy Documentation for Student Physical Therapists and PTs Transitioning into Pediatric Practice.

My most recently published book came out August 2nd, 2021 and I’m pretty excited about. Mostly, because it’s my first solo written, formatted, and self-published book in an area I have expertise. While the children’s book was FUN, the Pediatric Physical Therapy Documentation book feels POWERFUL.

The Pediatric Physical Therapy Documentation Book feels powerful, because it is solving a very specific problem. One I know first hand exists from working with my students as an adjunct Physical Therapy faculty member of a DPT program and also from being in Facebook groups like the Pediatric Physical Therapists’ facebook group where people ask for help with this problem when they’re on clinicals.

You see, the DPT curriculum does a fantastic job of teaching us how to critically think regarding orthopedic and neurological physical therapy documentation, but it leaves Student Physical Therapists (SPTs) to learn “on the job,” when they are required to translate the interventions they complete in pediatric practice and then try to make it sound authoritative and skilled on paper.

Often times, this is a huge stretch for students. I know personally it was for me when I had my first clinical rotation in a school district in North Carolina. I could barely understand how to make therapy fun and talk to children in a way that was direct and effective, let alone take what I was learning and then write it or type it on paper in a way that sounded intelligent, skilled, and something insurance companies like Medicaid would pay money for.

For this specific reason, I wrote the Ultimate Guide for Pediatric Physical Therapy Documentation on accident in November to December 2020. It started off as a pdf, a short spurt of information to help my students create sentence structures and prompts to help them understand where play became structured, skilled therapy and then how to write that onto paper so it could be read and interpreted by others as such.

That “short pdf,” became 45 pages of information, because there were just so many things to cover I couldn’t stop writing. In ways, if you knew me in person, you wouldn’t be surprised that I “accidentally wrote a book,” being wordy and sharing information is not necessarily something that is difficult for me.

What surprises me, is how fast it all came together. From writing to editing to formatting to self-publishing it took less than a year (9 months) and six weeks of that I did nothing but wait for the copyright office to approve it.

If you’re looking for a very straight forward book that helps you take the interventions that you’re completing in the clinic and helps you create efficient, authoritative, skilled documentation on paper this is the book for you. If you’re curious how I did it, keep reading.

how I wrote the pediatric physical therapy documentation book

If you like demonstrations, everything I share here and tons more is available in the video below. There are even time stamps throughout the whole 1.5 hours of the video (there’s so much to learn!) so you can go to the parts that are most important to you.

The main things I learned were this:

4:59 start/intro
11:07 my personally self-published books
13:27 author proof example and cover changes
16:03 how to write a book / getting started
17:10 the story of how I co-wrote my first book
19:59 writing a book in google docs and structuring my first book step 1
25:25 formating the first book in google docs for edition #1 (printed at staples)
25:43 why you shouldn’t write your book in google docs
29:30 formatting nonfiction book version 2 in google doc

34:20 writing a book in canvas
38:27 formatting a book in word/pages (mac)
29:30 formatting nonfiction book version 2 in google doc
34:20 writing a book in canvas
38:27 formatting a book in word/pages (mac)
43:18 how to “show invisibles” an absolute must for formatting
44:25 how to justify text
45:45 insert table of content & make it clickable
47:01 deciding on spacing and bullets
49:00 text boxes on top of the page
50:29 formatting pictures
52:00 specific pages you want to add for book signings
52:27 summary of objectives for formatting
52:47 submit for copyright and copyright page
55:10 KDP website (how you actually get the paperback submitted to amazon)
56:31 royalty payments and tax considerations
57:34 sales and marketing ideas

1:01:15 create a book and publish on kdp
1:03:17 keyword research and picking amazon key words
1:04:38 top two things you need to have to sell books on amazon
1:06:44 keyword everywhere for chrome and finding long tail keywords for amazon
1:08:57 continuing set up on kdp
1:11:30 cost of self publishing on amazon
1:14:00 example of cover for paperback on amazon
1:16:32 example of preview of paperback book on kdp publisher
1:18:53 cost to print a book and setting pricing
1:21:20 requesting author proofs (book with ribbon on it)
1:23:23 amazon author central "amazon author page"
1:25:50 how much my books made in sales and profit
1:33:24 closing and where you can find me

The biggest take away of this entire post, honestly, is this. I wish more Physical Therapists would write books. The public needs the information that we have locked away in our brains. There are PTs out there that write better than me, have more knowledge than me, and are honestly probably better at marketing than me.

Come join me on this journey. Writing books might not ever be enough to fully replace your PT income (or maybe it will be — one won’t know until they try), but more than that people all over the world absoluely need what you have to offer and teach.

If books arent’ your thing, maybe online courses are — in which case, you might be into my creative online business coaches Jason and Caroline and their WAIM unlimited group coaching program (one time fee, access to coaching for life), which gives you unlimited access to Teachery.co for free for life with purchase of their coaching program.