Case studies : Rotational physiotherapist: Hannah Williams

Hannah graduated with a degree in physiotherapy from the University of Birmingham in 2010. She is now a band 5 rotational physiotherapist for Aneurin Bevan Health Board.

Throughout my time at university I endeavoured to undertake as much voluntary experience as possible in a range of areas. I also worked at a local hospital on the weekend service once a month with very experienced professionals. I used the experience from this, together with my university placements to construct a personal statement required for job applications. I contacted my personal tutor and university lecturers for help with my CV and personal statement and spoke to other qualified physiotherapists for advice.

I then looked on the NHS Jobs website regularly for suitable vacancies and sent my CV to different hospitals. I applied for a job advertised on NHS Jobs and was offered an interview.

My physiotherapy course prepared me well for the job. 1,000 hours of clinical experience is needed in order to qualify, and by the end of this I had the skills of a band 5 physiotherapist already. The course also gave me skills in time management and communication, which have been very useful for my role.

I'm currently on a rotation in the outpatients setting and work from 8.30am to 4.30pm from Monday to Friday. On a typical day I treat 13 patients, which usually include 11 follow-up patients and two new patients. This rotation requires me to liaise with senior staff and other multidisciplinary team members, such as community staff, podiatrists, occupational therapists and consultants, to provide optimum holistic patient care.

Each rotation lasts four months and soon I will be moving to a different area and then taking part in the on-call respiratory rota and weekend stroke/orthopaedic service following training.

I aim to rotate around the different areas to build knowledge so that I can provide holistic care to patients in the future. I wish to specialise later on in a specific area, maybe in neurology, and work in sports physiotherapy alongside this, possibly progressing to lecturing in the future.

There are many things I enjoy about my job. Being able to help people and having time to talk and offer advice is great and I’m constantly learning. I also like working with experienced professionals and having the scope to expand my skills and treatment repertoire. There are so many different areas to work in and opportunities to progress.

A challenging part of my job is the pressure to see so many patients each day to help reduce NHS waiting lists. You also have to accept that you cannot cure everyone and some patients will not completely improve with physiotherapy intervention.

If you would like to get into this career, don’t let anyone put you off and tell you that there are no jobs; if you try hard and don’t give up you will get one.

Get as much voluntary experience as you can and ask for help with your job application form - get qualified physiotherapists and others to read through prior to submitting it. Finally don’t just wait for vacancies to be advertised on NHS jobs, send your CV around to a variety of hospitals and ask if they have any vacancies.