Wanting to hear from physios working in Aged Care in Australia

Hi,

I'd like to hear from physios working within Aged Care in Australia.

I'm AHPRA registered, am currently working in the UK and planning to emigrate to Perth/WA in the next 3 months if I can secure a position within Aged Care. I've had a good bit of experience in the UK/Ireland working within hospitals either doing orthopaedics or elderly care as well as domiciliary so I see it as a natural progression. However although I recently visited Perth, I haven't worked at all in Australia which is why I'd like to get as much info/advice as possible from physios working within Aged Care.

I've seen jobs advertised however the description of the role is limited and I've been reading around the subject of ACFI. I would be really grateful if anybody could reply and/or steer me in the right direction particularly around the job role namely:

1) Recently an agent told me that a lot of treatment is aimed/classed as 'pain management' and this can include 'soft tissue massage' at 8 min treatment sessions for clients within the Aged Care facility. In other words I was given the impression that the physio will spend a large portion of each day undertaking soft tissue massage/manual therapy on many clients working very quickly in order that it can be billed as 'pain management'. I just wondered how accurate this was or whether it's limited in reality and other treatments including Falls prevention, exercise classes, strength training exercises, TENS, education etc are used. Do you find the time you can spend with clients very limited due to (e.g.) the pressure for billing of treatment sessions. I'd really appreciate been given a rough idea of how the average working day is structured.
2) Do you generally work alongside other professionals such as OT's, massage therapists etc as part of the MDT or do you generally work alone most of the time?
3) For full-time positions, do you generally work in 1 big facility or can the role involve driving to various locations within the organisation.
4) Can you receommend any Aged Care companies with good reputations mainly in the Perth/WA region?
5) Is weekend work an option or is it mostly mon-fri?

Many thanks

Chris

Yes unfortunately that is the current scenario in aged care at the moment, you will only do treatments that are funded and alas, pain management is mostly soft tissue massage. Some aged care facilities do have programmes that they offer so you can be involved in them so look for bigger facilities as they tend to offer more services.