Physiotherapy

Overview

Physiotherapy helps restore movement and function when someone is affected by injury, illness or disability. Physiotherapists help people affected by injury, illness or disability through movement and exercise, manual therapy, education and advice. They maintain health for people of all ages, helping patients to manage pain and prevent disease. The profession helps to encourage development and facilitate recovery, enabling people to stay in work while helping them remain independent for as long as possible. CSP website: What is physiotherapy? | The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (csp.org.uk)

The Physiotherapy Department at Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust provides both inpatient and outpatient services to a range of conditions and presentations; including musculoskeletal, respiratory, neurological and orthopaedics.

We frequently have students on placement at DGT and have established extremely good links with Brighton and Canterbury Universities. We receive excellent feedback from students who have attended Clinical Placements with us and have good recruitment rates from students we have helped to develop. Whilst on placement our students are encouraged to attend the Trust’s student surgeries.

Teaching

We provide a range of teaching and development opportunities to our staff. There are regular team in-service training programmes for qualified staff within their specific rotations. We support staff through the Trust’s appraisal system to provide structured development in line with service and individual career ambitions. Our staff are supported to attend Leadership training alongside Clinical training.

Our Physiotherapy staff teach on Trust wide study days, for example, trache study days and NIV study days which supports both Physiotherapy education as well as the wider MDT.

We arrange twice yearly on call respiratory training to support staff to maintain competence to staff on our out of hours service. This includes use of the Trust’s Sim Suite.

We are keen to develop both unqualified staff and junior physiotherapists. We provide a structured approach to unqualified staff to enable them to complete competencies to progress from band 2s to band 3s. We are keen to support unqualified assistants to further their study by use of relevant apprenticeship schemes. Our band 5 staff are well supported and as they develop through their rotations they are able to be retained by the Trust into more senior roles.

Continuing Professional Development Portfolio

All qualified staff are required to maintain a CPD portfolio in line with HCPC and CSP requirements.

CPD and education | The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (csp.org.uk)