Physiotherapy

Physiotherapy is a really fantastic career and it covers a whole range and scope of areas. We typically teach from cardiorespiratory, neurological and musculoskeletal components but within that and when people go out and work in the community they may be working in acute hospitals, they may be working in outpatient settings, they may be working in rehabilitation centres and of course you’ll be working right through the age groups between paediatrics, all the way right through to care of the elderly.

Physiotherapy is a very intense course and it really suits someone who is very dedicated to understanding the function of the body and the way it moves and of course you should be a really caring and empathetic person.

When you graduate as a physiotherapist from CQU, you’ll enter into a typical system within a hospital where you will rotate through a wide range of areas, so you might be based in neurological care of the elderly then you might move to an outpatient clinic for musculoskeletal and then you might get experience as an intensive care situation. Normally you would rotate for about three years through different areas while you build up your experience and of course we’re not all big fans of each different area that we work in and so you might choose to specialise in an area.

There are a wide range in which, of ways in which we build clinical skills training within the course. So just to give you an example the key role of a physiotherapist is to assess a patient, to then problem list what we think has gone on with the patient, then to come up with a treatment plan, then implement that treatment plan and then to reassess whatever we’ve done with the patient to check if it’s actually worked. And so all of the units that are directly physiotherapy related, musculoskeletal, neurological and cardiorespiratory lay foundation level work so that’s how we build our foundation knowledge and as you start to work through the course we’ll start to introduce different types of skills that really work you towards being more of an advanced clinician.

Placement opportunities are right across Queensland and those opportunities exist in outpatient rehabilitation centres, community based centres, acute hospitals, private hospitals, public centre hospitals and the really the key focus is that you have an opportunity to see right across the lifespan. Now there’s different types of placements for example on the CQU campus here in Rockhampton we have our own health clinic and so some students are based there on a five week placement and it’s all a musculoskeletal type setting and there’s a similar clinic all the way down in Brisbane and what’s really unique about those is that they’re led by students and you even though you’re supervised by a clinician, all those decisions around a patient are made in conjunction with a specialised clinician but it’s really student led the entire way through and that’s a really important process to work through.

So one of the really unique opportunities of our physiotherapy students is that our class sizes are ranging between 25 and 30 per campus per year and that’s really great because you’re getting near one-on-one education. And so don’t just think about come to CQU that you’re just coming to do a Physiotherapy course and that you’re just coming to learn theoretical and clinical skills. You’re really actually coming to learn life skills and so when you graduate, yes you’re going to be a physiotherapist but you’re going to be uniquely skilled in other life skills that are going to carry the entire way through for example perhaps you want to set up your own business, perhaps you want to work clinically, perhaps you want to work in paediatrics, perhaps you want to work in adults or care of the elderly. You’ll be graduating with from the Physiotherapy course at CQU with a whole range of skills that will take you really right through life and you may influence the next round of people who want to come to CQU and study Physiotherapy.