CSP members are being invited to join a webinar hosted by the CSP and NHS Education for Scotland (NES), who are coming to together to highlight the significant workforce challenges our profession is facing in Scotland - and how physiotherapists can work to address them.
The CSP and NES will be hosting the webinar on 13 January, and physiotherapists and support workers are invited to contribute to finding solutions for student practice based learning.
Sara Conroy CSP Professional Adviser said: 'Physiotherapy makes an essential contribution to Scottish health and social care, and has the potential to reduce hospital admissions, facilitate early supported discharge from hospital, and keep people active and independent in their own homes.
The physiotherapy workforce also supports people to lead active lives and promote healthier communities. But to reach our potential we must have the right workforce, with the right skills, to go forward.
'Workforce shortages present a challenge now, and expanding the workforce presents challenges for future practice based learning, but these are challenges we must address for the profession of tomorrow.'
The Scottish Government has invested in the profession to support placement recovery following Covid-19 disruption.
The benefits of practice based learning
Jennifer Wales, a clinical physiotherapist on secondment to NES, is keen to promote the positive benefits practice based learning offers to students, staff and services alike to facilitate ongoing modernisation and sustainability.
However she explains: 'Even with transformational responses to student placements, we are in the midst of recovery from a 5 month disruption to placement provision.
'Across Scotland we currently have a deficit of over 127,000 hours of practice based learning for the Academic year 2021/22. This equates to over 564 6-week placements.
It is essential that we collectively support national approaches to increasing placement capacity and we commit to diversifying placement experiences for physiotherapy students in order to ensure we have a future workforce supply ready for practice
Sara Conroy added that: 'There is no such thing as a traditional placement anymore, leadership and project based placements can offer valuable experiences.
'Similarly the days of one clinician to one student are also less common, with services choosing to take a more teams approach to supervising students which can involve everyone at every level.'
The webinar will be held on 13th January from 12-1pm to explore these issues.
Physiotherapists and physiotherapy support workers are warmly invited to join the discussion, whatever their current contribution or experience in practice based learning, and contribute to the solutions.
To join the webinar, please email strathien@csp.org.uk by Wednesday 12 January 2022
Please email with the subject line: NES CSP January Webinar and provide your name, health board and email address.
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