M.Ost. Master of Osteopathic Medicine (Undergraduate Pre-registration Master's)

What is osteopathy is something that people ask me quite frequently, and the best way to think about it or explain it is we are a holistic manual therapy. Okay? So we use our hands to treat people. We don't prescribe drugs or medicines or anything like that, but we look at the whole person and the whole body. So we really want to know information about their life, how they're doing, what they've been doing, what their problem is, and how we might be able to help and treat that. Majority of the work we do is within musculoskeletal medicine and in order to be an osteopath in the UK, you need to go to one of the nine institutes that are registered with the General Osteopathic Council. In order to be registered, these institutes Marjon is one of you have to fulfil the criteria that is in the OPS which is the osteopathic practise standards and the GOPRE, which is the guidance for pre-registered osteopathic education. Our programme is four years long, it's integrated masters which you will enter at undergraduate level so after your A-levels or equivalents and then you progress through the four years and when you leave you'll be a registered osteopath with the General Osteopathic Council, which means you can call yourself an osteopath and practise in the UK and many other countries as well. So at Marjon we fulfil all the criteria required from the General Osteopathic Council and we're also looking at how we can fulfil the criteria required from the Advanced Clinical Practitioner and the FCP, which is the first contact practitioner ships. These are NHS based initiatives which allow multidisciplinary practitioners to work within the NHS. At the moment we're looking at how we integrate these four pillars, which are clinical practise, leadership and management, research and education within the programme to allow that to be easy transferable skills between private practise and within the NHS.

I already work in allied health field and I've worked with Osteopath for many years and basically been wanting to learn to do this for a long time. I find the course really, really interesting. From Year one until now. I'm in the third year and obviously now that we're seeing patients, it's all bringing everything together. Practical experience is really beneficial.

I'm a sports massage therapist and I've run a business since I was 20 and I decided I wanted to progress and osteopathy seemed like the right kind of thing. I like and wanted to get been more into exercise and, and rehab and, and further with my manual therapy and osteopathy had a wide whole body of purchase. What I'm looking for and I really liked, which is why I chose that over physio and chiropractor. I'd like to stay in England for at least for a year and hopefully work in the clinic. I'm working at the moment and then I'm hoping to progress and to move to some places in Europe and maybe work some sports teams and then progress with pain clinics and stuff as it goes from there. So that's my plan because you get so much more one to one really, and group sizes are small. It's lovely being in like a small classroom setting. I like it a lot

and I've always had an interest in health care. I've worked in the NHS and been a personal trainer for 20 years and I looked into other courses like chiropractic physio, and this one just stood out for me because of one the location two the level of knowledge and the way that the osteopathic course itself was presented in terms of the way that it looks at the body as a whole. It's something I've always believed in my career, hence why I'm here. I actually like the fact that it's a slightly smaller, more tight knit community because you get a level of care that you potentially wouldn't at big a university is you don't just become another number and a face lost in the crowd. I love the the attention that you actually get from staff in all areas. I think it's fantastic. The heavy, practical element was really, really good, especially from myself. I'm quite practical learner. I can't sit in lectures I'm not that great at them. And so much like anything, you know, it doesn't matter what you know, it's how well you apply it and that practical element really, really helps with that. I already know where I'm going. I've got a vacancy in a clinic in Exeter, near to where I live, so I'm going to spend most of my time then potentially set up my own online business at the same time.