And thank you for joining us for our panel this morning, we're still in the morning, um which we
will be discussing studying osteopathy. I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians
of this land on which we meet. The Widjabul Wia-bul people of the Bundjalung nation and pay
my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. I'd also like to acknowledge that within and
without the buildings, this land always was and always will be Aboriginal land. My name's Ellen
Fleeton. I'm a future students officer at Southern Cross University at our Coffs Harbour campus
um but I've driven up today to be part of the panel um so really excited to be here and thank
you for joining us and thank you so much to our amazing panel members for joining us. Um
so what I might do is get you each to introduce yourself and describe your connection to Southern
Cross University. Well I guess I'll start. That's right. My name is Sarah McPherson and
I'm one of the lecturer practitioners for osteopathy and I'm based out of Lismore.
I also have connection to SCU as I was part of the first cohort of students to actually study
and graduate as an osteopath from this university. Wow. Can I ask how long ago that was? A while.
Thank you, good to know. And Andrew, could you introduce yourself? Uh hi everyone, I'm Andrew
Fife. Uh, final student osteopathy in Lismore. I've really enjoyed being in Lismore. It's been a
bit of a journey but I think uh now I'm getting close to the end, I've been looking back and
reflecting. I'm enjoying it and it's been really good to get to know more about the human body
and deal with the Lismore community. Awesome and Angela? I'm Angela Slattery. I'm a recent graduate
from SCU. I graduated February of last year. Was one of the first students to go through the
new four-year osteopathy course um and I currently run a business in Lismore and also lecture at SCU.
Wow that's yeah super cool. Lots of connection there. Um Sarah, I'll start with a couple of
questions for you, if that's okay. Now this might sound like an obvious question
and I'm sure you're very well versed in answering it. So Southern Cross
University is one of just three universities in Australia that offers studies in osteopathy.
Could I start by asking you to briefly explain what is osteopathy and what do osteopaths do?
That is a very common question but it's yes there's quite a big answer but to bring it to
a short answer, osteopathy is a holistic method of diagnosis and treatment of musculoskeletal
and functional issues in the body. So we look at the whole person rather than some of its parts.
And how is it different to chiropractic or physio? Mainly that comes down to our
philosophy. So chiropracty is focused on male alignment of joints or misalignment of joints
with a lot of focus on the spinal column whereas physio is very movement focused and do a lot of
injury management. Where the difference in as I said with osteopathy is we look at the whole
body rather than just the sum. Awesome and how do you actually become a practicing osteopath?
What's the pathway? So to practice, you would, especially at SCU, you'd be required to complete
the Bachelor of Clinical Science with Osteopathic Studies as a specialisation and then to practice
uh in Australia as an AHPRA registered osteopath, you'll be also required to do the Masters of
Osteopathic Medicine. Awesome. Um Angela, I've got a couple of questions for you now.
Sure. Could you tell us briefly about your career and your role now and what's the most enjoyable
aspect of it? So I originally started as a massage therapist at the age of 16. I continued massage
therapy throughout my studies as an osteopath which gave me experience in manual therapies.
From there, since graduating, I've progressed more into treating osteopathically rather than
with the soft tissue treatment, so a lot more joint manipulation and trigger point therapy
with the addition of extra courses in dry needling and aromatherapy.
And since graduating, I've opened a allied health practice in Lismore. So I practice as an
osteopath there as well as having more osteopaths, massage therapists, psychologists, nutritionists
and pelvic women's pelvic health specialists in the clinic. And then I also had the opportunity
to assist in teaching last session at SCU and from there I was offered a position to teach
a class on my own this session. Awesome and it sounds like you're juggling many different hats.
What's most rewarding about the things you get to do? Most rewarding is the treatment aspect of
the practice and getting to assist people in ways in which they've kind of been through
every other health professional without diagnosis or any clear treatment plan and then they come
and see us and get results because we tend to look at things from a different aspect.
I also love the mentoring aspect of teaching as well and assisting future students in developing
their career and their style. It sounds like a very holistic and rewarding career. It really is.
Um so you talked a little bit about the treatment that you do. Do doctors refer people to osteopaths
and who are the most common patients that you would see or do you even call them patients?
We call them patients and we do receive doctor referrals as part of chronic management plans.
So we do get quite a few of those through the clinic. Most of those patients that we see are
elderly patients or patients who've experienced traumatic injuries with no resolution who benefit
from osteopathic treatments. In our clinic we have a variety of ages, we range from newborn to late
90s so we have the ability to treat many different conditions. Awesome and do osteopaths work in
hospitals or is it mostly private practice? At the moment, it's mostly private practice.
There is opportunity for osteos to work within aged care sector. So alongside osteopaths and
physiotherapists, many of my colleagues have gone on to do that and that's also really rewarding and
a little bit more permanent than heading out and trying to do it on your own. Yeah I can imagine
there'd be many benefits but also challenges of private practice for our osteos. Um what
this is a bit of a loaded question or interesting or juicy, I don't know. What's the average annual
income or salary for an osteopath? That is a very loaded question. How much money can we make?
I know you want to know. It really depends on what you want to do with your career. I've always
said to anyone coming out of osteopathy, don't treat health services as a career in which you
plan to earn money. I work because I enjoy it. For me, work's a hobby, money's a bonus
and it depends on the hours that you want to work. I've seen people head into practice
doing eight or more hours a day treating 16 or more patients a day which is quite full-on and
rewarding in its own way, if you want a high cash flow but you can achieve burnout really quickly so
it's a fine line between juggling cash flow and your own health. Yeah and I think that's a really
important point with whatever career pathway you take is maybe not looking at it as a money maker
and more what your life's going to look like long term. I think that's really good advice.
Absolutely and with osteopathy because we can go anywhere in Australia and our course
is also recognized in New Zealand, we have the opportunity to travel. There's no osteopaths
further out west. That's highly populated in the areas in which the course is offered
so anyone that wants to head out west and is able to create a practice out there would find
it really highly rewarding as well. And what sort of advice would you give to anyone considering
studying to become an osteo and what sort of traits do you look for as an employer?
Those are both good questions. So
I recommendations for people wanting to study is be prepared
for a lot of science. Science is very full-on in this course. It's a very fast-paced course.
It takes time and patience to get through everything. I did most of this course as a
single mum as well so it is achievable to pretty much anyone, if I can do it.
And traits that an employer might look for is just being yourself and being able to talk
to patients is probably the biggest thing. So get comfortable with talking to people.
That's great advice. That could be relevant to lots of different industries as well.
Um Andrew, I've got a couple of questions for you now. So professional placements are a big
part of this degree, correct? Um providing you with approximately 100 hours of experience um
at the bachelor's level and 580 hours at masters level. Um is there a choice of where you go and
what did that look like for you? How did you sort of navigate all those hours of working for free?
It was tough. Um I went through the bachelor's when COVID was happening so we had to do it
mainly in the health clinic here in Lismore but I think there is option when things are back to
normal to work at Feros, I think, is that right is that right? Uh yeah for one of the placements,
first you've had the diagnosis yeah yeah. Yeah so you can choose to work in an aged care facility
and in the master's program, you have external placement. So you get to choose I think 12 hours
per semester to work with an osteo of choice and then you do the rest of the hours at the clinic.
Can you explain for the people in the audience how the SCU health clinic works and what that's like?
As a student, you spend five hours per shift and all the booking services are
made through the clinic at Lismore and patients from the community come in
and we sort of problem solve at our best ability and that's i think where we learn the most yeah. I
have heard that a lot with osteo students, that it's actually in that clinic on campus where
they're learning all their skills and honing those skills and sort of building building
themselves up to get to where they want to be. Would you agree with that? Absolutely.
It's where basically all the knowledge gets consolidated from the first few years of study. So
when you get to the point where you're a treating osteopath within the SCU health clinic,
you're normally at the level where you're either at the very end of your bachelor, at the beginning
of your master's and by that point you're ready to take all the science that you have learnt in
your bachelor and put it together and you do that under the supervision of a registered osteopath.
Awesome. Andrew, what advice would you give students who are thinking about
enrolling in this degree? Um I think if you enjoy the human body, have a sort of caring
nature and want to help people and they're a problem solver, yeah choose osteo. And where are
you hoping to go after you graduate? What's your plan? Uh that's a good question. um I'm not sure
yet. I'm just worrying about getting through this last semester and then I think I have about five
months of clinical hours to complete. So then I'll sort of sharpen my direction a little bit more.
Nice and does do any of the panellists have anything else that you think is important for
people who are exploring this study or career path to know? Anything we haven't covered?
I think it's also important to know that there's other pathways as well to enter the osteopathy
course. So if you want to be guaranteed a place at the in the bachelor of osteopathy you can also go
through the Diploma of Health pathway which is sometimes a little bit of a softer landing too
if you want to make sure that health is the right direction for you. Yeah that's a fantastic point
and we have our study advisors here, the lovely ladies in the gray-ish purple polos um so if
you have an individual question about your own application or enrolment, they're the experts,
they're the people to speak to but there are a million different ways into university and finding
the right pathway for you is something that we're really passionate about at SCU. So I don't have
any more questions for our lovely panel but I would like to ask our audience members if
you had anything that you were wanting to know about the degree that we haven't touched on yet?
So obviously the flood was devastating for the entire community for various reasons and also
I don't know if you've noticed the amount of demountables around the area on the campus at
the moment but we've also been kind of a a refuge for a lot of places that had nowhere
to go. So we have schools that are here now, we have other phn health facilities that are running
out of the SCU health clinic and we're also an evacuation center at the time of the floods.
So whilst that was going yes we did have to put a pause on student-led clinics but we were working
towards ways to get students to be able to catch back up on their skills and their clinical hours
and assessments to get them forward. Um to sort of add to that. We had the option as well to go
the Gold Coast campus. So we if you didn't want to wait, I think we waited six weeks,
you had the opportunity to go up there and the students in Lismore that decided to wait they just
did two classes a week. So you know they still got what they needed from I suppose having time away.
Absolutely and as some of the students were also directly affected themselves, some of them
actually needed that time themselves to regroup and as Andrew said, there were opportunities for
them to travel to the Gold Coast to stay on top of their studies if needed. So for me,
as far as the clinic is concerned, my clinic is in town in Lismore CBD. We were fortunate enough
fortunate enough to be just high enough that the water didn't get us. So the water was half
a meter below our floorboards. Unfortunately, we had a lot of people within the area who weren't as
lucky. So we were without power for six weeks. I personally rented a room from a chiropractor
up in Goonellabah for those six weeks and did one day a week just to keep in contact with my
patients um following the flood when we reopened, we had available space to add psychologists and
counsellors to our rooms that we had vacant, so we currently have increased staff at the moment at
work to help with those services. Full-time and part-time studies is something that, you know,
students really want to get their head around so Andrew, I'll ask you first. Did you study
full-time or part-time? Full-time. Full-time and how many hours a week does that look like for you?
That's a great question um I think if you look at it, let's say you have four units full time.
Try and spend at least three to four hours a week on those units outside of uni, just to keep up
with progression and also, you know, make sure you're on top of those things. Yeah and what we
like to say as a blanket rule is full-time study is like a full-time job so you would be looking
at committing about 40 hours a week to that and then part-time study would be like a part-time
job where we would say about 20 hours per week. However, in the osteopathy degree, because of the
placement requirements, you do sort of need to be committed to be able to fulfil those hours. Sarah,
is there an option to do this degree part-time? There is but uh that would be a conversation that
on enrolment would be best had with our course coordinator as well to make sure that you're
planning the best pathway and the best units to support your progression through the course.
Yeah and just on that as well um with the full-time study load, we often find students still
have time to work between 10 to 15 hours a week to support themselves and have a half-decent social
life as well so it it it is different to school because your timetable is a lot more flexible
but you you do really need to be committed to those 40 hours a week for full-time study.
That's a great question. Early entry early entry's available for all of our degrees except midwifery
so yes you absolutely can apply for osteopathy through early entry. We encourage you to do so.
All right, what we might do is wrap it up now um so if you haven't already,
speak to our study experts about getting your application in. We wish you all the best with
the rest of the year and we really look forward to hopefully welcoming you to our lovely university
community here at Southern Cross and I would just like to say a massive thank you to our amazing
panel members. Thank you for making the time to be here today on a Saturday. I've really enjoyed
and I've learned a few things myself. It's been our pleasure. Thank you for having us. Thank you.