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BSc Sport Therapy or Rehabiltation in Sport and Exercise

Hey guys, I am in need of your help here. I am going to be applying to Plymouth Marjohns uni next year and it is either going to be in Sports Therapy or Rehabiltation in sport and exercise.

In terms of course content, the rehab seems to be more interesting to me personally, however whenever I ask people, they always tell me that out of the two, the sports therapy will be more useful to me in the future.

In the long term, I aim to set up my own private clinic after having several years experience working in the field. Alternatively I will be applying for a pre registration Physiotherapy MSc after completion of my BSc if I feel that a physiotherapy career will suit me better.

However I am asking for your advice on which one out of the two courses in question would be more beneficial to me in the future? The Sport Therapy course is approved by the Complementray and Natural Health Care Council and the rehab by BASRAT.

Thanks for your time and I hope to hear from you shortly :smile:

Reply 1

Ironmike

If you are planning to do a physiotherapy degree anyway then why not apply for this from the start? The Bsc is competitive to get into, but the Msc is supposedly even tougher, so it's not like you can bank on walking straight into that even with a relevant degree. Further to this, it is 18 months of hell. We have a student with us at the moment who is on the 18 month Msc and she paints it to be a living hell.

Depending on where you want to work will depend on the advice. Things in the NHS are changing slightly in that rehab isn't dominated by physios anymore since the any willing provider agreement. However, in practice, I have never come across a sports therapist or osteopath or some such professional working in an NHS environment.

If your plan is to go private, I would encourage you to think about the practicalities of this. I know when I came out the other side of my physio degree, the thought of treating patients with no senior support was something that I didn't want to even think about. Even three years down the line, there are still plenty of times I am happy to have a senior to chat to about a difficult presentation - take the 15 year old boy I saw the other day with acute thoracic spinal pain as an example.

I have had a lot of experience over the years with sports scientists, sports therapists, sports rehab etc having worked for 5 years in a big chain gym and then gone on to do physio in the NHS and private settings. My take on it, and this might sound snobby, but these other rehab therapists have mostly ended up working in a gym for the same money that I was on having done a 6 month personal trainer qualification. With these courses, there really is little option upon graduating but to set out on your own and start a business, and although I'm sure some do very well, I am yet to come into contact with someone for whom it has worked. They will be personal training, or doing sports massage in a private physio practice, or maybe volunteering for the local Sunday league football team. It maybe comes across as a bit snobby, and I don't mean to belittle the hard work of anyone on here in those fields slogging their way through a 3 year degree, but there just doesn't seem to be the career options that there are with physio.

And this I guess brings me back to my existing point. Saying that you will probably do a Msc pre-reg physio course kind of flags to me that you realise this, maybe not fully, but in some part. I cannot see the NHS suddenly employing cohorts of sports therapists as they don't have the ability to work across other areas such as respiratory or neuro. Yes, there is some privatisation going on, well quite a lot, and some MSK services may choose this, but currently, physio is the only rehab profession recognised by the HCPC, and this I think is a huge barrier to others. Without regulation then I can't see the NHS adopting other professions, regardless of how much bette/worse they are perceived to be in relation to physios. I know that there are regulatory bodies for the courses you mention, but these aren't held to the same legal standards, and the name of sports therapist or whatever is not a legally protected title to my knowledge. You may correct me.

This has turned into a bit of rant - sorry. I just think that before embarking on an expensive and time consuming journey, it's best to weigh up the options. If you perhaps cannot get into physio at the moment due to grades for example, there are options such as year long access to science courses. Yes you are delaying by a year, and then doing a 3 year Bsc, but a 3 years Bsc, then perhaps a delay and then an 18 month Msc is going to take longer in the long run, and cost more ultimately.

(edited 9 years ago)

BSc Sport Therapy or Rehabiltation in Sport and Exercise

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