My name’s Alison Rushton, I’m the Programme Lead of the MSc Exercise Sports Medicine Football
Programme, here at the University of Birmingham.
There are a number of reasons that this programme is unique but to give you those key reasons,
firstly the programme is run in partnership with the Football Association, secondly the
environment in which we teach on the programme is really exciting.
We use the prosectorium which is dissection at the University of Birmingham and we also
use the National Football Centre at St. George’s Park and we use the training pitches there,
the gymnasium, the hydrotherapy pool and their other facilities.
And thirdly this programme has a mentored practice component and what that means is
all of our students have the ability to work within a sports medicine or football medicine
environment as part of their programme and that really helps their development.
So this programme is aimed at qualified doctors or physiotherapists and they might be working
in football already or it may be that they want to move to start working in football.
In addition the programme is also transferrable across a range of other areas of sport.
So this programme is slightly different to other programmes in the School in that it
has two opportunities to start.
So you can either start in September or you can start in January in each academic year.
So this programme runs as full time or part time and it also has a lot of distance learning
options within it.
So by the very nature of that description, the programme is very flexible.
For full time students the quickest route through the programme is 13 months and they’re
fairly heavily timetabled throughout the three terms but in different patterns of attendance.
So for some modules they might attend for a whole week at a time, for other modules
they might attend for a couple of days at a time or a day a week in some places and
the students will know all of that information at the start of their programme.
For part time students the programme can be spread over 3 to 6 years.
The modules run in the same place each year so they’re able to dip in and dip out of
the modules as and when meets their individual needs.
So in other words, they can keep their work alongside the programme and it works well.
If students work in an environment where it’s difficult to attend, many of the modules have
either distance learning components within them or they have the ability to select modules
that are wholly distance learning.
The aims of the programme in terms of careers outcomes are different for two different groups
of students.
So if you’re not working in sports medicine or football medicine at present then what
the programme will do is give you the skills to go and work in that area and that will
be clinical skills as well as theoretical skills, so for example your understanding
of research.
If you’re already working in football medicine or sports medicine, what the programme will
do is enhance those skills and address any gaps that you might have within your profile
and that will enable you to then apply for more senior roles within that area.
So why this course?
This course is innovative, it’s the only programme of its kind internationally and
particularly that partnership with the Football Association is absolutely central to that.
So what it really does is provide you with an appropriate environment to upskill your
knowledge and your clinical skills to enable you to work within sports medicine or football
medicine, or if you’re in that environment already it will take your skills to a higher
level and that will put you in a position to lead medical teams within the football
or sports environment.
Why the University of Birmingham?
The key reason there is easy, it’s a research led university and in particular this department
in which the programme runs has a strong research ethos and strong research background.
Students on this programme are very much part of that and our students go on to present
their work at conferences, to publish their work and some go on to have research components
within their jobs.
A number are also now looking to do PhDs following their study here, so our main selling point
as regards the university I think for this programme is that it’s a research led programme.
My favourite thing about teaching on this course is the students and it’s the wealth
of experience that they have already through their clinical careers so far and they bring
that into the programme and what we do to really enable that is we have some exciting
aspects of the programme about where we teach and the facilities we use.
So for example the specialist modules on the programme are taught at the National Football
Centre, St. George’s Park, which is north of Birmingham at Burton-upon-Trent.
We also go into the anatomy dissection lab, the prosectorium here at the university.
So those experiences in those different environments really bring alive the learning and teaching
on this programme.