Quote Originally Posted by karen.hankey View Post
A sports rehabilitator is a degree only qualification. 3 years is spent learning anatomy, physiology, mechanism of injury, musculoskeletal assessment, functional rehabilitation, psychology, clinical reasoning, sports massage, nutrition, manual therapy, eletrotherapy, neurodynamics along with much more. We spend 4 months on placement withing different settings including private clinics, sports clubs, gyms and with an orthopaedic surgeon.

Sports therapy is not as clear cut, or thats the way I percieve it. For example, you can become a sports therapist with a weekend course, but you can also achieve a degree in it. Therefore when you book to see a Sports Therapist you don't tend to know how much training they have had. From what I have heard this is being looked at by the Sports Therapy profession to try and ensure a minimum level of training.

This is my opinion, not fact so please feel free to correct me if you are a sports therapist and disagree.
Ok coming from a sports therapy background im currently in my third year by the way id have to agree with some of what Karen.Hankey has got to say about the course but?
One thing that you can't do is become a "Sports Therapist" in a 12 week course, agreed yes you can take courses these being Sports massage, Advanced techniques and the what not and give yourself a self title of it and once again possibly lowering the standards of care. These courses I feel should be aimed at people already with the background knowledge as some physio's sports rehabilitators who didn't study them at their University this said its not anyone can do it and unfortunatly its the same with Rehabilitators some PT's go out after learning how to give out training programs at which point they also call them selves a "sports rehabilitator"?

Being on a sports therapy course I can tell you that we have done the same as the Sports rehabilitator worked with sports teams and in clinics but this was over 3 years as we needed to complete work experience through this whole time.
What also is of interest is that on that chosen sports rehabilitator degree most of the modules that you learnt are actually the same as a sports therapist? Sports massage, Advanced treatment techniques (STR, NMT that sort of stuff), Assessment of injuries, Nutrition, Anatomy & Physiology, electrotherapy, Rehab they are just to name a few.
I just feel that its abit strange when there is different names for courses but they are basically the same thing. Id would have to agree that physio's do know more than sports rehabilitators and other professions in cetain areas but the rest a all treading a fine line of being the same thing?
In my mind (sorry physio's if it offends you) at the minute most physio's are used in primary care once the person is walking they are released at whihc point its whoever out of the rest of the professions get there first to help the person return to their standard of sport or everyday activity.
Cheers anyway for this post brilliant stuff being written.