Re: Kiwi Fizio in the making
Hi Kiwi Fizio,
Its great that you are wanting to move into such a great field of work. Im a 4th year graduate (Otago) and looking for a job and i will answer your questions.
1) Personally, Im a people person. I love helping people, and specifically in physio, I love empowering people to improve their health and functional abilities, whether it be for sports or just being able to walk for 20 mins etc. At school I was strong in science and PE, therefore it was a natural progression.
2) Finding jobs. Currently it is difficult with the ACC changes. It has put a spanner in the works for graduates as practices aren't hiring, however, the market will level out soon and it will be fine. You will not find it hard to get work, trust me, its health, people are always getting injured :)
3) Overseas, Aussie and UK (i think) is easy (transferable). Canada, you need to sit exams, america is the hardest, each state has different processes. They all require sitting exams. I am currently considering aussie, depends on what happens in NZ.
4) Best = helping people, being part of a professional team.
Worst = annoying patients, some areas of physio are very prescriptive so get boring.
5) Key skills. Communication, interpersonal and team player skills are critical. Reasonable logical reasoning. Passion for people. Empathetic. Good listener. Reasonably good at science.
6) Yes you are always having to improve yourself. If you want to better yourself in your profession, post grad is v. important.
7) I see this profession having more of a frontline primary care in the future. This will involve physios ensuring the public are active and taking preventitive care model for their health. Its hard to say at this stage but there are other ways we may go but it will be around keeping people active.
8) Great achievement is getting my degree!
9) No spealization yet. I plan to go into musculo at some point but i like to keep it broad at the moment so i am seeing a range of pathologies and clincial presentations. Remeber physio is not all bout sports, there are a lot of cool areas to get into.
10) pay - if you want to make money, you are in the wrong profession. Starting for grad is 45-50K, increases as you get experience. If you owned a successful practice, you could earn over 100K
11) Ive done private as a student, it is good but personally i find the hospital is more fun partly because it is more of a team environment, you are not pressured for appoiutments and you see more cool stuff. Its all about personal pref really.
12) see above
13) What is better? depends what your interested in really. in your average pp you dont really change a lot, but in hospital for example you can re-teach someone to walk post stroke and have a significant impact on peoples lives.
Main thing is to go into your degree with an open mind and not think physio is all about sports and ankle sprains etc, cos there is such a huge amount of cool stuff out there to be invovlved in and its ever-expanding!
14) Probably need to be at least 5 years, but if you get a good share deal after a few then why not, depends on the circumstances.
Alright, hope that helps. Where you wanting to train? AUT or Otago (you know which one i think is better ;)
Good luck
Chris
Re: Kiwi Fizio in the making
Kia Ora bro, So what field are you currently in that you want to change out of?
- What attracted you to this field? Didn't get into medicine... :P Physio was the next best choice I figured.
- How easy was it finding a job as a graduate (especially in NZ)? If you have not graduated yet, how are you finding the jobsearch process? Its easy as pie, NZ is fortunately still horrendously short staffed and Aussie isn't too bad either, If you want the awesome jobs then you'll still have to compete but there are plenty around. We are getting more and more UK and Irish physio's coming over as they can't find jobs in their country very easily - there are too many of them. So this may change but at the moment we are sitting with a healthy level of vacancies.
- Have you considered working overseas given all the barriers and possible re-licensing you have to go through? And if you did go overseas, how easy/hard was it to re-license? I'v considered it, and yea it's difficult from NZ - unless you have a European passport then it's much easier. If your into VSA stuff then getting into africa, sth america, asia are all easy enough. But like chris said america is hard. The UK isn't too bad, I'm considering doing it, plenty of NZ get registered for the UK so it can't be terrible. We have a tasman exchange thing that means you don't need to register for oz, beauty of that is they pay much higher even when you factor higher living costs. But I love NZ too much to leave.
- What are the best & worst bits of this job? Thats different for everyone aye, You better like the idea of health and people. The best for me is helping people, I love it. The worst depends on where you work. I'v been public in really short staffed hospitals and the worst part in that situation was doing the work of the nursing staff because they were too understaffed to do it and having to comprimise my practice by doing very short treatment sessions due to time constraints.
- What are the key skills required for this job? Communication
- Do you have to carry out postgraduate studies? If so how does it help you progress? You don't have to - there are alot of opportunities to however it tends to help to have them if you want to travel overseas otherwise most people will eventually do some form of diploma or accreditation but it's not required.
- Where do you see this industry going? More Autonomy and likely masters and doctorates in physiotherapy eventually being offered (this is being pushed by the americas and likely the world will follow)
- What has been your greatest achievement? Any regrets? Theres the odd patient that you see that you'll manage to get from being dependant to being independant and thats always a really good feeling. Not many regrets to be fair.
- What specialization are you in? When did you decide on the specialization? No true specialty - Have been working Public for a while now, but have also locummed privately. Specialty is probably is muscoloskeletal work, but I didn't decide to do that, it's just the way my brain is geared and what I'v done most of.
- What is the pay like? (In relation to the country, public or private practice, specialty) and what (if any) are the perks? NZ is poorly paid all round in comparison to other countries. Certainly private pays more than public but it will depend what kind of contract you are on, I'v earned more in public because in private I was on per patient contracts and didn't get enough patients.
- Have you started working in a private practice? Yes
- Have you had experience working in the DHB/NHS? Yes
- Which is better private or public? Go Public first - In NZ we are often the first person to see the patient in private and as such it's our responsibility to screen the patient for conditions which can mask themselves as muscular problems, by entering the public system first you get a more rounded knowledge of common medical presentations and will become a far better therapist as a result.
- After how many years, in your opinion, would you open your own (share a) private clinic? When I felt confident to do so. I have friends who have considered this at 2 years, it's not my style I think I'd undertake postgraduate study and get more experience, if I had to put a number on it I'm guessing year 5. Going into partnership is a good idea especially if the other person has alot of experience, it's a good idea to have the ability to bounce ideas off another person to keep you sane and challenge you to provide better treatment.
Have a good think about Physio - theres alot more to it than private practice, there is a huge public sector. Be sure about your decision as it's a big one. Make sure you investigate other jobs as well (OT, SW, SLT, Dent, Med, Nursing) and see what the perks are and what they offer. Private physio is a great lifestyle job, but can take a period of time for you to earn the wage you feel that you deserve - This depends on how much you think you deserve though I suppose.
Have a Good Day,
Pudding
