Ena Cheng
Hi everyone, I am a first year postgraduate student studying (Pre-Registration) Physiotherapy at King’s College London. It is a field of work in which I have been very passionate about ever since I was young. Prior to this degree, I studied Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation which has provided me with a vast amount of experience to allow me to get to where I am today – studying this Physiotherapy degree!
How my Degree is Helping Me Prepare for my Future Career
As a part of my two-year degree, we are given a vast amount of opportunity to gain valuable clinical experience at 6 different placements. Two of which take place in my first year and the remaining 4 during my second year. Placements can take place in hospitals, private clinics and other healthcare environments. This provides me with the exposure of working with patients who exhibit a diverse range of conditions, granting me the necessary experience that will be pivotal post-graduation. Additionally, it also offers me the unique opportunity to experience different clinical wards such as cardiorespiratory, neurological, paediatrics, musculoskeletal wards, etc. Meaning I get an early taste in the career of a physiotherapist, as well as an insight into the mechanics that make it such an intense, but most importantly, patient-centred environment.
Throughout my undergraduate degree, I gained experience working with musculoskeletal, neurological and cardiorespiratory patients. Although, the patients were largely healthy individuals, in their Phase III or IV of rehabilitation. Gifting me beneficial insights on rehabilitation during these stages. However, the placements in for my current degree will help me build upon this, and delve deeper into this monumental role, that has life-changing properties to the patients that are dependent on this service. I hope to also increase my understanding on how each condition and patient are unique and thus, the require a personalized treatment that is satisfactory to their specific needs.
First Semester Experience
Over the first semester, we have had a couple stimulated practice education days (SIMPED) allowing us to practice our subjective questioning and assessment with a patient. Through this experience, it gave us a small insight to what a small part of our future placement would look like. We’ve also had to work with other students across the healthcare profession (e.g. nurses, medics, dietetics) to deliver a presentation regarding the important of patient discharge. This is essential to my career as the process of patient discharge is critical to a patient’s hospital experience. It is also important to be able to have good teamwork and cooperation with students across different healthcare disciplines. As physiotherapists always work in a multidisciplinary team which consists of doctors, nurses, occupational therapists and many more, who share a similar common goal, to giving the best possible care available to patients.
Careers and Employability Team
The Careers and Employability team is dedicated to assist and support postgraduate students across all degrees to explore our career interest, strength and values. They provide us with extensive resources to help every aspect in obtaining a future job or internships. From writing a CV and interview preparation to finding certain roles and jobs in our preferable profession, the Careers and Employability team would be able to guide us to the right path. I’ve had my fair share of guidance from the team to help me prepare for my career and interviews and I found it very beneficial as they provided me with tips and answered all the queries that I had. I’ve also signed up for weekly jobs and opportunities alert from the team to constantly update me on what available full-time/part-time/temporary jobs are on the market!
With the vast amount of support from the people at King’s, I am confident I will be able to figure out my future career path and the steps to get there.