Career Advice
Question:
I am currently holding an offer to study human Physiotherapy at Brunel Uni, wanting to specialise in Equine. Am I able to do it in this route? And do you get much work as an Equine Physio?
Answer from Rhiannon Bradford
Hello Bethan
Thank you for your enquiry. Definitely the only way currently that you can qualify as a Chartered Veterinary Physiotherapist is through your human Physiotherapy BSc degree first then onto the MSc in Veterinary Physiotherapy. This provides you with the gold standard in training and allows you to treat both the horse and rider as a combined partnership, which certainly in competition situations can make all the difference. Clients appreciate, like and value our ability to be able to address issues both underneath the saddle as well as on top!
There is another course being run by Nottingham University which is allowing other ‘suitably trained’ individuals to have a qualification in ‘Veterinary Physiotherapy’ but you would need to look into that a little closer yourself and see if it offers you what you want.
In terms of work out there, there are three clinicians in our practice, although I’m more managerial now than I was and we set our practice up six years ago and we have gone from strength to strength, although it is a very tough climate out there with an awful lot of competition from often less qualified individuals. What I would say is that it is hard work to set up on yourself after qualification, although more and more practices like ours or purely Veterinary (medicine) practices are employing Veterinary Physiotherapists to join their teams and more and more people all the time are becoming aware of what ‘Veterinary Physiotherapy’ is all about and it’s excellent benefits. Generally I think it`s fair to say that having your dual qualification in human practice provides you with a really strong armory of knowledge which you will then be able to be flexible with throughout your career.
Useful websites:
ACPAT http://www.acpat.org/
IRVAP http://www.irvap.org.uk/
ASSVAP http://assvap.com/
CEPT http://www.ceptraining.co.uk/
I do hope this information is helpful to you Bethan. I wish you all the very best at Brunel should you wish to proceed with it.
