Osteopathy as a Career Archives - Under Construction

Osteopathy as a Career: the first year in practice

I work in three practices, and patients often ask if that’s “normal”. As osteopathy generally isn’t available on the NHS, clinics are typically small businesses that can’t provide 8 hours of patients, 5 days a week for a new practitioner. Unless you’re taking over a list from someone, you’re unlikely to find full time work in one place. Even if you’re setting up your own clinic, you’re probably going to want to work for someone else to pay the bills while you build a reputation and therefore a list of patients.

In my last post I mentioned that osteopathy is a small world. I had shadowed Nick at the Burton Road Clinic in fourth year as part of one of the modules, and spoken to The Village Osteopaths at the same time but not managed to fit in shadowing. After I got my results and sorted out moving to Manchester, I sent emails to ask if there was any work going, and after a chat with both principal osteopaths, I had a start date. I found the vacancy at Leek through a post that Helen had put on an osteopathy facebook group. (more…)

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28th June 2017

Osteopathy as a Career

Osteopathy as a Career: studying at the BSO (now UCO)

I can only give my account here, so I decided to narrow this post down from “studying osteopathy” to “studying at the BSO”. I studied the full time MOst course from 2012-2016, with former part time students and pre-registered physiotherapists and sports therapists joining us for third and fourth year. This has changed somewhat, but this is an account of my experiences.

Because the British School of Osteopathy doesn’t have halls of residence, we lived locally in general student housing. BSO did play a role in this by organising an accommodation day about a week after A level results came out. On this day, anyone who wanted to find housemates and somewhere to live would meet at BSO, introduce themselves, then head out to find a house. This worked pretty well for me; I met three girls in the morning and by 5pm we’d put down a deposit for a terrace in Elephant and Castle. Although it’s intense, it gives you more choice than halls would, and I was still living with one of my housemates until I graduated, so it did pay off to choose our own! This also meant that I met the other girls I’d live with in subsequent years, so there was a bit of a community before the course even started. (more…)

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8th March 2017

Osteopathy as a Career

Osteopathy as a Career: applying for the course

For those who’ve stumbled across this with no idea what osteopathy is- it’s a holistic manual therapy, meaning that patients, generally with muscular or joint pain, come to us and we consider all parts of their history to find a diagnosis. We’re trained to identify whether any patient fits in our remit or needs referral to another healthcare practitioner. If the patient is safe to treat, we do so with our hands: manipulating or articulating joints, and treating muscles using direct techniques like massage, or indirect techniques like Muscle Energy Techniques. We can also give lifestyle and exercise advice.

Osteopathy is rarely available on the NHS, but this means that we generally work as self employed practitioners, and patients often come to us to avoid the long waiting lists they may face elsewhere. There are many branches of osteopathy, but they all tend to treat the neuro-musculoskeletal system. For more information on what we do, have a look through the Conditions Explained section of my site.

A lot of people chose to study osteopathy (straight from school or as a second career) after eye opening results as patients themselves. In contrast, I fell into it after choosing my A Levels (biology, chemistry, geography, English literature) based on what I enjoyed and what I liked. Originally, I put those together to come up with something environmental, but then I questioned where a degree like that would take me. At this point my mum suggested looking at osteopathy and physiotherapy, because “you’ve always been able to get the knots out of my back”. We went to an Oxford Brookes open day to compare the two, and at that point I decided on osteopathy- it seemed more hand on and less reliant on equipment. (more…)

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2nd December 2016