Why do a PhD as a Physiotherapist

One of the reasons I decide to do a PhD was to contribute to research, to make my field more scientifically supported. I remember being an undergraduate student and lecturers were teaching us rehabilitation techniques and assessment methods that their efficacy was not proved sufficiently. An interesting fact is that many of the physiotherapy approaches that we were taught and were also used by physiotherapists for many years were later proved to have minimum or no effect or even should be contradicted for some cases. So, during my practice placement I decided that I wanted to help in providing a robust background to support the evidence around physiotherapy management and assessment methods. In order to be able to do that, I had to advance my research skills so I underwent an Advanced Physiotherapy master course, which gave me the opportunity to publish my first paper about “Clinical Pilates” and to apply for PhD programs.

There are many options of research in physiotherapy, after searching for a couple of months for the most suitable PhD opportunity for me, I was finally in between two. One option was to continue my research in Pilates as a rehabilitation approach, which would be a PhD more focused on MSK, and the other option was to do something completely different that I had no experience with. My passion for exploring my abilities and challenging myself overcame my fear, and here I am doing a PhD in computerising neglect tasks for Stroke survivors.

If you are thinking of doing a PhD and you are not sure whether you should do it, I would advice you to explore your options.

-        There many different opportunities in research, since Physiotherapy has many different areas that still needs to be explored Cardiopulmonary, Neurology, Paediatrics, Rheumatology, Geriatrics, Women’s Health, Oncology etc. and even in areas that have been widely searched such as MSK, Sports and Orthopaedics there is still need for further demonstration of scientifically facts.

-         The Universities offer a variety of ways that you can conduct a full-time or part-time PhD, such as PhD by thesis, PhD publication, Distance learning PhD etc. If you are not sure if you want to spend 3 or more years (for part-time students) doing research you can always do an MRes, which typically lasts a year.

-        Funding your PhD, especially if you a self-funded student can be hard sometimes, but speaking by personal experience there is a variety of ways to manage it, most of PhD students have part-time job and also the university usually offers many career opportunities ex. (academic, teaching) to students.

To summarize, I strongly advise you to explore, do your own research and follow your dreams!

- Ioanna Giannakou