Clinical Training
A busy outpatient clinic is attached to the London School of Osteopathy. This is the environment which is probably the most exciting for students. This is where students use the theoretical and academic knowledge they have gained in the classroom to assess a patient and to apply their practical skills in carrying out an appropriate treatment.
There is a continuous process of assessment of all the elements of the therapeutic encounter. These include case history taking, using differential diagnosis in exploring a knowledge base to arrive at the point of carrying out the appropriate treatment. Experienced osteopaths fill the role as clinical supervisors in helping and enabling the student in this experience. The supervisor is there to guide, to help the student in making a clinical diagnosis and judgement of what may be the correct treatment and will sometimes take-over when this process may be too difficult, especially in the first challenging times of arriving in clinic. First year students are exposed to the clinical situation where they may shadow senior students to familiarise them to a new environment.
Confidence steadily increases, as the course progresses, by firstly observing and intimately assisting, gradually developing one's skills so that by the time one is in the fifth year the student is almost able to work independently with the clinical situations that need to be managed. Each student begins clinical practise at the start of the course and it remains a crucial element in each of the five years. The student gains the confidence that comes with close supervision and hands-on experience. The clinical training is so designed as to being able to expose students to practitioners who will introduce their own flavour and unique perspective to ways that patients may be analysed and treated. Clinic supervisors introduce students to skills and techniques in a progressive way, that is linked to the systems and diseases that are being studied. He or she will form part of the assessment process that monitors your progress.
Students are also expected to make practice visits to osteopaths to observe different types of practice and the way they are run. Once qualified, there are a number of different routes that can he followed. Some will choose to practice in a solo way, others, to work in a group practice or in partnership. Some practitioners may simply wish to be employed in an already established practice initially while they gain the confidence and the skills to start their own practice.
Increasingly, opportunities are opening up for osteopaths to work in GP surgeries which are often multi-disciplinary. Less commonly, rheumatology departments in hospitals are employing osteopaths.
The London School of Osteopathy offers guidance and help in setting up a once you are qualified. Advertisements by osteopaths wanting partners and associates, as well as practices that are for sale, appear in Osteopathy Today, the magazine for osteopaths, published by the British Osteopathic Association. The school has a bulletin board, where further information is available.