Can PTs Give Nutrition Advice in Florida?

By Dr. Sean M. Wells, DPT, PT, OCS, ATC/L, CSCS, CNPT® , NSCA-CPT, Cert-DN

Are you a physical therapist (PT) in Florida and want to offer the most modern, holistic physical therapy care by including nutrition? Who wouldn’t, right? But before you dive into offering nutrition advice you might need to know the requirements of PTs offering nutrition in Florida.

Before we jump too far ahead it’s important to understand that two different types of nutrition counseling exist: 

1.) general advice/recommendations for health/wellness; 

2.) nutritional advice specific to treat disease. 

1.) General Advice

Any healthcare provider, even PTs in Florida, with the proper education and training can offer general advice/guidelines for health and wellness. In other words, if you are a practicing PT in FL and a client asks you what a “healthy” diet looks like, you can certainly provide them general nutrition education and resources such as NutritionFacts.org, Government Guidelines, or similar. As PTs, general nutritional counseling could be shelved under the patient education CPT code 98960. 

2.) Nutritional advice specific to treat disease 

Now, if you are in Florida and dive into providing nutrition advice specific to a disease things get slippery. Take a look at the map below from www.nutritioned.org. Florida is colored navy blue, or second from the darkest blue. This classification means that PTs cannot provide specific nutrition counseling, unless they are a registered dietitian (RD). An example of providing disease-specific nutrition advice would be a PT a recommending a patient to eat 500 fewer calories to improve a patient’s diabetes, or to to become gluten-free to reduce knee pain. Check out the map:

Nutrition is Still Valuable for the Florida PT

While a PT in Florida cannot provide disease specific nutrition counseling, it doesn’t mean that the PT can’t or shouldn’t learn about nutrition. Physical therapists learn about many things that we are not legally allowed or trained to do. For example, consider orthopedic surgeries or pharmacology. Many PTs take continuing education courses and attend lectures at conferences on these specific topics despite never performing surgery or dosing out medication. Understanding what surgeons are performing and how medications affect patients is often crucial to physical therapy practice.

Learning more about nutrition as a PT in Florida can help you:

• Educate patients on nutrition for general health and wellness
• Identify patients with nutrition specific diseases
• Promote referral to physicians and RDs for specific nutrition counseling, which in turn can promote your business and professional network
• Help with patient diagnosis and management by knowing what an RD or MD ought to be doing for specific nutrition patient management

So, if you are a PT in Florida nutrition education is still valuable. Check out our evidenced-based, board-approved online continuing education courses for physical therapists. Taking our courses earns you continuing education hours (CEH) in Florida! Enroll today and progress through our 3 course sequence starting with nutrition basics, then the assessment/prescription process, and finally a specialty focus on select populations and specialized nutrition topics. Complete all 3 courses and earn the title of the Certified Nutritional Physical Therapist (CNPT®). Again, as a FL PT you may not be able to apply the dietary assessment/prescribing or some of the advising for specific diseases; however you will be better armed for general nutrition education, referrals, and disease identification!

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Keywords: nutrition, continuing education, Florida, PT, physical therapy, legal, practice act, requirements

Disclaimer: The above article is written as opinion piece and does not convey specific legal and/or practice act advice. Students and participants need to check their State laws, practice act, and other legal restrictions before implementing nutrition interventions or assessments. The consumer of this article and our courses acknowledge that the State laws, practice acts, and restrictions can and do change. The Nutritional Physical Therapy team cannot be held liable for changes to such laws: the student, PT, or person engaged in such nutrition actions are responsible for examining laws and regulations as they see fit.