Sports Rehabilitators

[physiobob]

The anatomical knowledge is as good as a physio's, the whole first year is taken up by anatomy, physiology of injury, types of injuries (including mechanism of injury, signs and symptoms) and basic treatment techniques. All this is built on in the subsequent years.

Clearly you do not have any idea of the depth of anatomy that physiotherapists study. It is the same in Australia of that in medicine, the only difference being we don't actually learn the surgical cutting and have less in the pharmacology. To give an idea it goes on for 2 year or intense study and examination not just of normal anatomy but diseased anatomy as well. It also includes many hours in the lab working on cadavers, each and every week. I think that the sports therapist does not have such knowledge although please do correct me if they also train to the level of a surgeon.

I have read all the point above and would like really to keep the replies to the original posting which was can you compare. The answer is that there is NO comparison. Sports injury management is a small subsection of the field of physiotherapy. Physiotherapy itself covers a multitude or areas from neurology, paediatrics, gerontology, women's health, orthopaedics, musculoskeletal/outpatients,vascular surgery, cardiopulmonary rehabilitation etc etc. As a result the physio has to learn a large amount and in depth about a lot of things that can affect the human organism. Thus they have a lot of knowledge when assessing a client that is important.

A sports therapist or rehabilitator may well be great at their skill set however they should always consider consulting a physiotherapist for advice as and when it is required.

I will provide a classic example from 2 years ago.

I assessed a client for a "back sprain" following a schoolboy rugby injury. They had been told it was a strength issue and to get to the gym and do squats, cleans etc etc. One of the first things I did as part of the assessment was a full neurological check for brian, reflex, cord problems etc. It was there that I noted something was not quite right.

After an hour of assessing I was still not clear what was going on. I explained this to the boys father and asked for another hr to assess him later in the week. In between I brushed up on everything neuro that I thought is might be. Later that week I finished the assessment and sent him to a neurologist with my findings.

It turned out he had muscular dystrophy. The result of which was a very different treatment plan to a tackle injury from rugby. It was my grounding in many areas as a physio that lead me to this diagnosis, fairly quickly and easily. This was impt. for the boy who until then was being placed at more and more risk of further injury.

I think this illustrates that some courses might be good at teaching exercises and how to perform them (even assessing a ligament strain/sprain), but it is a very different thing to really nut out whether or not they are indicated as the appropriate treatment strategy or not.