Gathering place for osteopaths
BSO launches 2 year post graduate MSc course to enable Doctors and Physiotherapists to become osteopaths
The BSO is launching a new 2 year post graduate MSc course for Doctors and physiotherapists to become osteopaths. It's due to launch in Spring 2012 and is subject to RQ status.
Personally I find it a remarkable (albeit unsurprising) move and struggle to see how it will benefit the profession. I can see how it would benefit the BSO's income but I'm not convinced it will benefit the profession as a whole, in fact it might undermine it. Perhaps I'm wrong and maybe other musers can enlighten me. Let me know your thoughts on this.
"In recent years, we have had an increasing number of applications for our programme from physiotherapists and medical practitioners who also wish to qualify as osteopaths. While we have been able to accredit prior learning in the past, we have now developed a programme designed specifically for this group.
Our new MSc Osteopathy (pre-registration)* for physiotherapists and medical practitioners is a two-year full time pre-qualifying programme designed to meet their needs. The course reflects the existing musculoskeletal knowledge and skills of the participants, building on this base to ensure that they achieve the competences required for independent osteopathic practice.
Graduating students can apply for registration with the General Osteopathic Council (GOsC) as an osteopath in the UK (subject to Recognised Qualification Status being granted by the Privy Council).
To apply for this programme you will need a suitable academic qualification (degree in physiotherapy or equivalent, or equivalent overseas qualifications, or degree in medicine). You will also need to provide evidence of recent experience in musculoskeletal care and be able to demonstrate your commitment to training as an osteopath."
Tags: BSO, british school of osteopathy, osteopathic education, osteopathy, physiotherapy, postgraduate, postgraduate education
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Yan-Chee Yu on -
I might add that I don't believe osteopathy is better than orthodox medicine (and for the record, I don't believe that the converse is true either) - it is simply different. The types of condition/dysfunction which benefit best from osteopathy are different, so it's no surprise that many patients who benefit from osteopathy may not have had satisfactory results from orthodox medicine.
However, someone has to make an informed decision as to whether osteopathy or a pharmacological/surgical route is the best option for a patient, and I think that we do need to be able to inform a patient of their options, and respect their decision.
There is no reason that referring someone for orthodox medical treatment cannot be an osteopathic decision.
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Permalink Reply by Small Fry on -
Yan-Chee Yu, at one level I agree wholeheartedly, but I might still reject patients you would take on or vice-versa. Please let me know how you make this decision, and then I'll tell you how I do it, because it is possible we use very different criteria for deciding.
Some people have a list of medical conditions that can/cannot be treated. Others base it on how serious the problem appears to be. There may be many more ways to view this decision. A common one is acute vs. chronic, but it always puzzles me how practitioners can get away with only treating patients who are going to get better anyway.
The RQ colleges seem to have a couple of indicators - musculoskeletal vs. systemic, and minor vs. severe. And it is experience or training that lets you go further into the systemic/severe corner. I believe that not only have they bisected the field at completely the wrong angles, but they have failed to seperate the sheep from the goats at all with this scheme (hence their particular patient profiles that always seemed so hard to treat).
Yan-Chee Yu said:The types of condition/dysfunction which benefit best from osteopathy are different...
However, someone has to make an informed decision as to whether osteopathy or a pharmacological/surgical route is the best option for a patient...
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Permalink Reply by Hume O'Rous on -
Physical examination is one of the central tests used to provide a holistic diagnosis, alongside a comprehensive case history. We need to include genetics, psychosocial factors and the diagnostic sieve to provide a sound and meaningful diagnosis?
Where do you get the idea that private practice attracts a different sort of patient to the college outpatient's clinic? For me, I know to expect any sort of patient to present in our practice. This week we've seen patients with auto-immune illness, diabetes T2, hypoglycaemia,hypertension, G-I disorders etc. That's normal for us and presumably that's what you were alluding to when you referred to the perceived difference between the two practices? Osteopathy can be used in more or less any illness, providing you make your stance clear to your patient, and ensure you communicate well with their GP. You also need to know what you are clinically comfortable taking on....
London private practice does not represent the patient demographic outside the capital?
Yan-Chee Yu said:I was actually referring to the ability to take a good case history without the preconception that a osteopathic treatment is actually the best option for a patient. I know that in private practice this is often the case, but in the BSO student clinic, where the patient demographic is actually quite different to private practice, being able to pick up that something might be not quite right was relatively common.
Physical examination tests are another thing completely.
Hume O'Rous said:What reliable manual screening tests can you teach at undergraduate level for: vertebral artery insufficiency; aortic aneurysm; or early stage carcinoma of the cervix (to name a few of many)?
How many hours should an osteopathic teaching college allocate to cover screening for 'red flag' indicators do you reckon, roughly?
Yan-Chee Yu said:I also agree. Safety, orthopaedics and medical screening should come first, but it's not that complicated, as long as it's taught well. A well constructed process can be learned quickly, so that there is actually time to teach osteopathic diagnosis, which should not replace, but rather go beyond medical screening...
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Permalink Reply by Yan-Chee Yu on
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Where do you get the idea that private practice attracts a different sort of patient to the college outpatient's clinic?
- The fact that the patients I see are from a different demographic to that which I saw in the BSO clinic. This doesn't mean that I expect a certain type of patient, it's just what I happened to experience personally.
Osteopathy can be used in more or less any illness, providing you make your stance clear to your patient, and ensure you communicate well with their GP. You also need to know what you are clinically comfortable taking on....
- Yes, I agree with this point - it can be used in more or less any illness, but it does not mean that it is necessarily the best thing for the situation, and I would add that (in answer to Small Fry's question) what individual cases (rather than conditions) which I would take on rather than refer are based on what I feel I can honestly achieve with my own level of skill. In one sense it's pointless to say what osteopathy can do for a patient, because osteopathy does not exist independently of practitioners - it only makes sense to say what you believe you can do, and that's what I try to go by.
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Permalink Reply by Hume O'Rous on
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I hear what you say, Yan-Chee.
Are we agreed that the key ingredient to deciding the suitability of applying osteopathic principles then treatment to a given clinical problem is the clinician's own expertise and judgement? If this is indeed the case then we are happily together on this.
It has been the case for some time that 'authorities' outside our profession have sought to limit our scope for practice without our consent. It would seem therefore that we need to reclaim our right to practice within our specific limits, and not be dictated to by others. Last year saw a discussion on our future predicaments that we needed to face up to (see the blog 'The Storms Up Ahead are only Little Storms). One of those was 'Scope of Practice'.
We are getting close to a critical time–or as Malcolm Gladwell would say,'a Tipping Point'–for those who wish to retain our autonomy as primary care practitioners. So who is prepared to face up to this and those other challenges? I suspect there are many of us willing to do so.
We have no alternative!
I think we should become much more assertive and focused, as the stakes are so very high.
Yan-Chee Yu said:Where do you get the idea that private practice attracts a different sort of patient to the college outpatient's clinic?
- The fact that the patients I see are from a different demographic to that which I saw in the BSO clinic. This doesn't mean that I expect a certain type of patient, it's just what I happened to experience personally.
Osteopathy can be used in more or less any illness, providing you make your stance clear to your patient, and ensure you communicate well with their GP. You also need to know what you are clinically comfortable taking on....
- Yes, I agree with this point - it can be used in more or less any illness, but it does not mean that it is necessarily the best thing for the situation, and I would add that (in answer to Small Fry's question) what individual cases (rather than conditions) which I would take on rather than refer are based on what I feel I can honestly achieve with my own level of skill. In one sense it's pointless to say what osteopathy can do for a patient, because osteopathy does not exist independently of practitioners - it only makes sense to say what you believe you can do, and that's what I try to go by.
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Permalink Reply by Yan-Chee Yu on
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Yes, I do agree with you - but we do need to be extremely honest with ourselves (and in turn to our patients) as to what we are clinically able to do and with what outcomes.
As I see it, the problem stems from the fact that the education system (not limited to osteopathy) in this country does not recognise that knowledge cannot exist independently of people. This means that teaching has now been reduced to reading (and essays to check whether someone can successfully regurgitate something with correct referencing).
The real active ingredient of learning is to discover something for yourself, which may be sparked by reading something, but in a practical subject like osteopathy, most definitely cannot be learned without the living knowledge which exists in people.
If this continues for enough generations (and it doesn't require many), then skills become lost, and unrecoverable. Then, because not enough people have experienced what can be achieved, we have to carry out “scientific” studies on which we can rest (anecdotally, as we have then not discovered the knowledge for ourselves), and then limit the scope of practice accordingly.
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Permalink Reply by Hume O'Rous on
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You are losing me with your argument.
You seem to be apologising for not being adequately trained. Do you feel you have to provide an exact prognosis to each and every patient? That would be impossible and fails to acknowledge that the patient's inbuilt self-regulation is really the primary mechanism effecting recovery and healing.
Osteopathy does not claim to cure patients in the same way that allopathy offers the potential for a 'magic bullet'.
We don't have guns. We don't deploy exocets, inter ballistics nor even hand grenades. We surely work with the body's extraordinary capacity to self-repair, and catalyse homeostasis. Accessing the patient's innate resources is a key skill. Bela Schick's aphorism resonates for me, particularly when I contact the complex patient and consider where to start.
'First the patient, second the patient, third the patient, fourth the patient, fifth the patient, and then maybe comes science. We first do everything for the patient; science can wait, research can wait'.
That's when you continue to learn and develop as a practitioner.
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Permalink Reply by Himesh Mistry on -
i agree
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Permalink Reply by Yan-Chee Yu on
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Apologies. I was agreeing with you.
I am not apologising for being inadequately trained. My remarks were in reference to your comments about limiting the scope of practice, which I was describing as an inevitable consequence of an education system where regurgitation is prized above discovering knowledge for yourself. Discovering knowledge for yourself is the only real science (I'd quite like to take the term back from the peer-reviewed anecdotalists who have stolen it), and as I see it, the only way in which undergraduate osteopaths can learn to believe in what they do, instead of relying on words on pieces of paper as a reference point for deciding whether the scope of practice outlined by the GOsC is unreasonable or not.
Hume O'Rous said:You are losing me with your argument.
You seem to be apologising for not being adequately trained. Do you feel you have to provide an exact prognosis to each and every patient? That would be impossible and fails to acknowledge that the patient's inbuilt self-regulation is really the primary mechanism effecting recovery and healing.
Osteopathy does not claim to cure patients in the same way that allopathy offers the potential for a 'magic bullet'.
We don't have guns. We don't deploy exocets, inter ballistics nor even hand grenades. We surely work with the body's extraordinary capacity to self-repair, and catalyse homeostasis. Accessing the patient's innate resources is a key skill. Bela Schick's aphorism resonates for me, particularly when I contact the complex patient and consider where to start.
'First the patient, second the patient, third the patient, fourth the patient, fifth the patient, and then maybe comes science. We first do everything for the patient; science can wait, research can wait'.
That's when you continue to learn and develop as a practitioner.
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Permalink Reply by Small Fry on
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Yan-Chee, what you seem to advocate is reacting to mostly controlled learning by choosing mostly self-directed learning instead - it's one extreme to another.
There are other ways - honest mentoring from more experienced osteopaths is one way. For my part, I wouldn't have understood osteopathy in the way I do without drawing on:
1) prior life experience
2) the basic training
3) guidance from more expreienced practitioners
4) my own curiosity
As an experienced inventor of the wheel, I'd say the problem is not THAT our education is directed, but who is directing it and to what destination.
Remember that in our recent history, we asked for - and got - regulation by the state. And now we are unhappy about the standards and benchmarks valued by the state. And the state in its wisdom thinks the best standards use an external point of reference, lest it be seen that they are not in control. Sup with the devil, use a long spoon. Any acupuncturists, herbalists etc reading this and thinking that regulation will solve all their problems - think twice.
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Permalink Reply by Yan-Chee Yu on
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Small, that is not what I am advocating at all!
What I said was:
"The real active ingredient of learning is to discover something for yourself, which may be sparked by reading something, but in a practical subject like osteopathy, most definitely cannot be learned without the living knowledge which exists in people."
so I am not saying that controlled learning (I'm taking this to mean learning where someone else tells you something) is useless, but rather that it is incomplete, unless a student takes the step of discovering that something is true for himself.
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Permalink Reply by Small Fry on
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Yes - and thanks for the clarification. However, my guess is that many students and graduates are quite satisfied with what they have found, hence do not appear curious. They already have their truth, if we think they have missed something, I'm not sure what we as another party can do about it.
© 2012 Created by Ronan O'Brien.
