 Welcome to Open Day. My name is Charlie McIntosh. I'm actually one of the lecturers in the physiotherapy programme, so for some of the audience you'll be coming and joining me soon, hopefully. What I'm going to do is go through some of the things about the physio course and what is actually involved in physiotherapy. At the end there will be quite a bit of time for questions, so if you've got lots of questions by all means feel free to answer them and if you're lucky I might be able to answer them. The ones about the physio course I can, if you want to know how to get a perfect score I might be not so perfect. So I guess the first thing when you're thinking about doing physio is physiotherapy for you. Let's put aside worrying about whether you're going to get the score, whether it's is this something that you think you would like to do for the rest of your life possibly? I've now been doing it for over 30 years and I've loved it. We do have two physio courses and I'll talk about those a little bit more. One is a Bachelor, so if you're coming Bachelor of Physiotherapy that you could enter, or if you already have a degree in something else that is vaguely related I guess there is a Master of Physiotherapy that is a two year graduate entry programme. What do you need to be a physio? I think you need to be a reasonably good communicator. You have to actually want to spend some time with people. If your greatest passion is to actually look down a microscope or sit at a computer for the rest of your time, possibly physiotherapy isn't for you. The other thing I think is you do have to have a genuine interest in assisting or helping or working with people who are unwell and injured and that needs to be from all ages and all backgrounds. To complete the physio course you actually need to do all components of those and I'll talk a bit more about the wide breadth of it. For many people before they start a physio programme that only experience has been a sports injury and they think that maybe that's the only thing you get to do. We do do a section that's with children and we do quite a big chunk that's with older people and very frail and unwell people. If that's not something you think you would want to do then maybe this isn't for you. However, if you like people you think it would be good to help them. I guess the next step is to think about do you enjoy analysing and solving things because a lot of what we do is looking at why isn't someone moving well, how can I help them, what are the things that are going wrong. There's a lot of problem solving and thinking through and if that's not something you enjoy or something that you struggle with then perhaps this isn't a career for you either. However, if you like people, you're a good communicator, you enjoy making decisions, you enjoy working out puzzles. The final thing I guess you have to think about is it's a fairly active job. You do a lot of actually hands on moving people, moving with people. Although that says manual dexterity, I think probably anybody in the room has probably got the manual dexterity to go with it. But you do need to be fit and able enough to stand all day and work with people. At this stage for many of you what you really be worrying about is the entry requirements. For the Bachelor of Physiotherapy, you have to have at least four stage two SACE sort of aspects and a competitive ATAR. A competitive ATAR is probably a little bit of a polite term actually because in fact the ATAR to get in last year was 98.8. Now it does go up and down a little bit each year depending on how many people have applied and what the general pool is. So it might be a little bit lower, it might be a little bit higher in different years. In terms of what subjects you actually do, we do make an assumed knowledge of stage two biology and physics. So it's really the year 11, especially for physics that we're probably interested in. I would say that although we recommend those and it certainly makes your first couple of years of physio easier if you've done those, it is not impossible to do physiotherapy if you haven't done those subjects and there are no actual prerequisites. So if you haven't been doing biology and physics, don't worry about it. If biology and physics aren't subjects that you do very well in, then probably you're best off really going from subjects that you think you'll do well in. However, in the first couple of years of the course there's quite a lot of anatomy and physiology and a bit of biomechanics and all the electrotherapy part of physiotherapy where we actually do require some of that knowledge and you might just have to work a bit harder if you haven't done biology and physics. But it certainly isn't the end of the world and I've had many students that have been very successful when they haven't had those prerequisites. It's just around making first and second year easier for you. For the master of physiotherapy, so that's the grad entry course if you already have a bachelor degree or equivalent, in order to be eligible for it you need to have a grade point average of greater than five so you need to have got a credit or above pretty well in everything within your bachelor degree to get that. The other thing is there are some prerequisites for our course around anatomy, some kind of research skills and I'm trying to think of the other one, sort of group work and communication that we actually have as prerequisites for coming into the course. So you might need to contact the physio school and actually find out if the things that you have done meet our prerequisites before you come into the graduate entry programme. And the other little rider I guess there is that the bachelor degree that you did or the equivalent needs to have been in the last ten years for it sort of to be current enough to be considered coming in. There are alternative pathways if your degree was later than that and you might wish to come and talk to us specifically about that. In terms of what courses you will do when you enter the physio programme, there are biophysical sciences, so the anatomy, the physiology and the biomechanics and that's really where your physics and biology will help you out if you've already done them. In physio we do quite a lot of anatomy because we've got to cover the whole body and so you will do big chunks of anatomy in first and second year and you will also do quite a lot of physiology in first and second year. The biomechanics we do mostly in first year and then you kind of apply it straight away beyond that. Inevitably there's a whole lot of professional studies around sort of actually learning how to be a physio because that's the point of the course. So by the end of this course we really wish you to have quite extensive clinical practice and physiotherapy. The second and third years of, sorry not the second years, in second year you'll do your first clinical placement, in third and fourth year you build up to doing more and more, by the time you do fourth year most of your university stuff will centre around clinical placements and you will be out working as a physio under supervision and treating people for most of fourth year to try and build up that practice before you graduate. There is quite a big chunk within our course around what we call evidence based practice and really that I guess this is an increasing issue around all health professions in Australia where what we want to do is make sure that what you're doing with your clients actually has a firm base of evidence to associate it. So they sit alongside all your clinical courses as well as we do some, and it's really sort of the research side of it, what information is out there in the research world to support it, understanding how to consume that literature and how to apply it to your actual patient. The other thing we have some sections on social and behavioural science which is around the kind of communication and becoming effective at working with people and understanding the links in terms of people's disability and especially their pain I guess around how that actually fits with their social and their behavioural aspects of their life. Many of you might be thinking I wonder where I get to work when I graduate. There is in physiotherapy a wide range of places that you may end up working and although we cover a very big broad spectrum when you're an undergraduate and learning the programme or if you do the graduate entry the same thing, most people end up going and working in one particular area of physio and sort of that being their home that they enjoy most. There are positions both in public and private hospitals and probably the other big place at physio's work are in private practice and by far the majority of physios that are out there working will be working in a private practice setting in some shape or form, a relatively small proportion of the profession work in the public and private hospital sector. There is work within the women's health services specifically, in community centres around the state. That should actually be day therapy centres rather than day care centres or day therapy centres. Do you want to sneak down the front here? As well as nursing homes we have a massively growing population of older people who usually have quite a lot of physical disabilities that have led them to choose to live in a residential care setting and clearly physios have a big role within that as well and as their population ages that's going to get bigger and bigger I think not smaller and smaller. Sport centres and certainly for many of you that's probably where you've already met physios with your various sports injuries over the time and that is a dynamic and enjoyable area that many people shoot for. Factories and offices so in the occupational health and safety area people are working around that and that does tend to be a specialisation as well as occupational health units within particular organisations. So very wide in terms of, so it's quite hard to say just what does a physio do and you may choose to work in a variety of those over the time. I mean my personal things is I've largely worked with older people and in rehab for people with who've had strokes and can't walk any longer, people have had spinal cord injuries, people who have Parkinson's disease that's been where I've spent most of my career, other people have spent their whole life in sports areas, other people have spent their whole life in women's health, things like that. So your work could actually include and certainly will include while you're an undergraduate working in acute care so you may be working within the hospitals and everybody will do several hospital rotations and in this setting you're really often dealing with the lung issues that are associated with being in hospital or the mobility issues that people are unable to move very easily for a variety of reasons. And you get to have, I can't do all these scary attachments any longer because I don't do that. Rehabilitation is kind of more my end of the spectrum and in rehab it usually your past where people are medically unwell so in the acute area you usually are speaking with or working with people who are medically unwell in rehab they've moved into being not medically unwell any longer and really mostly what you're doing is trying to get people maximising their movement ability and being able to move as best they can. This actually encompasses a huge area so rehab can be in the sports area so it might be after your ACL reconstruction or at the other end of the spectrum I guess would be someone who's had a huge spinal cord injury and you're actually teaching somebody to move again with their new system with their body essentially so it can be very wide. Rehab covers a big spectrum. There's also rehab after cardiac surgery, cardiac rehab there's pulmonary rehab for after people have had lung surgery so it's a very broad area. Some people choose to work only in pediatrics and you will do one pediatric rotation as an undergraduate or as a grad entry and if you know you think that working with children is your passion this is an area that many people enjoy and it is quite broad again because of course there are many reasons why people may not be able to move when they're little and so some of it will be acute orthopedic increasingly at sports injuries and some of it may be people that are born with severe disabilities or gain them along the way become acquired. Hydrotherapy, we do quite a bit of work in the pool probably more in a rehab session than anything else and that's probably the area that is so if swimming is your passion we can leave you in the pool forever but actually you don't stay in the pool forever because you get a little bit kind of shriveled up in the end but there is lots of opportunities if that's something that you enjoy. Women's health is very much a specialised area not everybody will do women's health as an undergraduate an elective option and in this area you're working with people in that kind of pregnancy area as well as some of the specific health problems with women I guess and the biggest area for this is probably incontinence so the muscular problems around why people might be incontinent either after they've had a child or later in life and that then sort of spreads it into also why men may have incontinence as well. You might be interested in research and in fact the more and more of my time is spent in a research arena and you will have an opportunity as an undergraduate to do some research within your research project section in the last year of your course and some of you will choose to go on and do honours and possibly PhDs so I went on and did a PhD eventually in my own sort of area in stroke and now supervise people with honours and PhDs all the time and it's a very rewarding area and I think it's if the problem solving's really your passion then you may end up in that area in the end and some people do a balance of a bit of both or even probably one of our more diverse ones is actually there is a growing body of people that work with animals and so mostly dogs and also horses is really because there I guess where the money is because there's the dog racing and the horse racing industry that support that but there is a growing area of physios applying the same principles that they use with people really into the animal world and when I was working in London I supervised some honours students doing this and there were wonderful things with people sort of doing special treating the osteoarthritic knee of the elephant and all these are wonderful things I loved it, it was hilarious it won't be there will be a very small percentage but your options are very wide if you work as a physio I guess the other thing that is a really big plus about physio is there is my shortage of jobs we pretty much everybody who wants a job at the end of their physio course gets a job the people that don't get jobs are really people who are choosing to go off and do some other things there always seems to be a shortage of physios we keep thinking we train them and we train them and surely eventually we will run out but they are still always screaming out for physios in various places so you are pretty much assured of having a job if you wish to have a job in physiotherapy at the other end good luck any questions? yes the registration you are registered as a student at that point so yes you do have to actually kind of register but at that stage you are only registered to work under supervision of the clinical educators or people within the hospital sector and once you graduate then you get your full registration but you do have a sort of interim student registration at that time yes once you have graduated we have just gone to a national registration system within physiotherapy and there are now required numbers of points and I confess because we have just gone to a national one I actually can't remember how many it is but it is just you do have to just put in a blurb that I have done this much continuing education for the year when you reapply for your registration each year graduate entry essentially we have about 100 positions at the undergraduate level now although I think technically it is 95 to be honest but that always ends up being more bodies because there is a number of people that need some prerequisites and come in part time so we usually end up with about 120 actual students with bottoms on seats sort of thing and so that is probably about how many we take in it does go up and down a little bit each year depending on how the university processes them the graduate entry program is 20 yes to choose that is actually quite a difficult question to ask and I will just repeat the questions over and here is it was around if you don't get into the undergraduate physio course then you go and do another degree and then move into the graduate entry program what course should I do probably my first advice really is that you do a course that you will enjoy because you do need to get a credit or above and incredibly difficult to do that if the course is boring you to death the other thing is I would look at what the prerequisites are in terms of anatomy and physiology and stuff to get into the course so that make sure that the course will cover those or that you can do them within that degree other than that really it's up to you at the moment most of our graduate entries come from people who have probably the vast majority come through human movement or health science but they can come from anywhere it doesn't have to be those and it doesn't give you any special extra to come from there but it's really I think choosing something that you would enjoy because you might get to the end of that and go actually I don't want to do physio now I want to do something else and if you haven't done something that you've enjoyed it's probably a bit of a waste of your life really isn't it and so I really would say choose something that you think you'll enjoy but just make sure it has some of those prerequisites other questions follow up study day I think I might have a little blurb afterwards on that where is it go here we go so the inside health is this the one you're talking about oh where do I my lesson take okay so we're down at the city east campus for most of the lessons in the first and second year you'll spend most of the time at the city east campus so that's that little one that's kind of wedged right in the corner of Adelaide uni opposite the Royal Adelaide Hospital and then once you get into the placements then you're all over the place all around Adelaide depending where you placed for particular placements no they're not all in Adelaide however for the country ones and the interstate ones people have options so when you when we put up the placements people can actually put in their preferences for where they would like to go and as far as humanly possible we give people their preferences and sometimes it might be their second preference not their first any other questions yes okay there is an alternate entry pathway and it I've lost you yes and it can be very different for different individuals and I would actually say if you're thinking about that there is a booth somewhere here where it talks about sort of alternative pathways and other ways to enter into UniSA and I'd really strongly recommend you go and have a chat to them I personally don't have a lot to do with that so I couldn't give you sensible advice but certainly go and speak to them and you might like to think about the session that's on later today about alternative entries into OT Physio any other questions okay just to a little reminder if you actually want to come and see where you'll actually do your classes visit the labs where we run one of the pracks and we run one of the clinics out of there actually see the space there is inside health on Sunday the 11th of June so you might like to just come and quickly come in here hopefully it'll be as nice a day