Qualifying and practicing as a Sports Therapist will enable you to provide advice and treatment for the prevention and rehabilitation of injuries. Upon graduation you´ll be able to empower sports men, women and children to achieve optimal potential and performance.
The course is split between theoretical and practical elements, and you´ll learn how to provide advice and treatment to manage the individual needs of a person within their sporting environment.This may involve designing and carrying out injury prevention programmes, providing immediate care of injuries and basic life support in a recreational, clinical, training and competitive environments. There will be opportunities to assess and manage sports injuries by providing specialist advice and treatments like sport and remedial massage and musculoskeletal interventions as part of a rehabilitation programmes.
This course at Bournemouth University is accredited by the Society of Sports Therapists who will provide insurance for 250 hours of practice. On successful completion of this course you will be eligible to apply for membership with them.
The entry requirements for this course are 128 tariff points from 3 A-levels or equivalent qualifications. BTEC Extended Diploma of DDM. Offers will be subject and grade specific, particularly in the science subjects.
If English is not your first language, you will need to provide evidence that you can understand English to a satisfactory level. English language requirements for this course are normally:
IELTS (Academic) 6.5 with a minimum of 6.0 in each component of writing, speaking, listening and reading or equivalent.
For Sports Therapy, we are looking for applicants who are:
Experienced in health, fitness, sports and/or rehabilitation settings
Motivated, committed and enthusiastic about being involved in Sports Therapy
Able to demonstrate a clear understanding of the Sports Therapy profession and can demonstrate the skills and qualities relevant to the profession
Able to demonstrate that they have a career plan and are thinking of future employment opportunities.
Year 1
Core units
Foundations of Sports Therapy: This includes building on your foundational knowledge of anatomy and physiology and relating it to, common sports injuries, the process of tissue healing and practical sports massage therapy.
Athlete Welfare: This unit will enable you to identify risk factors associated with participation in competitive and recreational sport and exercise, specifically the interaction between the athlete, their environment and their own responsibilities concerning the maintenance of optimal health and wellbeing.
Exercise Prescription in Sports Therapy: Involves learning to apply the principles of exercise theory to plan and implement comprehensive exercise programmes. learningabout physical fitness tests, contemporary testing equipment and accepted test protocols and measurements.
Assessment of Sports Injuries 1: Gaining an understanding of current knowledge and best practice in identifying and managing acute sports injuries and illness. As well as acquiring skills in carrying out initial assessments and primary surveys in the acute sports injury setting. This unit involves observing practice in a sporting environment.
Research Methodologies 1: Learning research skills for effective literature searching, and for designing, collecting and analysing/interpreting data sets gathered from original research studies.
Early Career Professionalism: This unit sets the foundations for you to develop into an effective, compassionate, robust, resilient and responsible professional with excellent communication skills.
Year 2
Core units
Soft-Tissue and Therapeutic Modalities: l Learning about advanced soft tissue and therapeutic techniques within the context of sports injury management.
Assessment of Sports Injuries 2: This unit covers the principles and rationale of clinical assessment and evaluation of the peripheral joints. Enabling you to apply your skills relating to subjective and objective assessment, to plan treatments, monitor and evaluate different clinical presentations.
Applied Physiology: Developing your theoretical and applied understanding of the physiological changes that occur as a result of training and exercise. Learning about physiological assessment within a laboratory setting and the application to the individual for example in relation to exercise/rehabilitation programme design.
Manual Therapy 1 – Peripheral Joints: This unit develops your understanding and practical application of the principles and practices of manual therapy techniques for the peripheral joints.
Rehabilitation in Sports Therapy: This unit enables you to combine your pathophysiological knowledge and injury rehabilitation theory in order to plan, implement and monitor comprehensive rehabilitation programmes that progress a client from injury to full functional fitness.
Research methodologies 2: Building on research practice from the first year this unit enables you to understand a range of research methodologies and provide a critical understanding of their use.
Year 3
Throughout the course all students undertake a minimum of 250 hours of placements. There is an option of taking a further minimum 30-week placement at the end of your second year of study.
Year 3/4
Core units
Manual Therapy – The Spine: Developing understanding and practical application of the principles and practices of manual therapy techniques to the spine.
Innovation in Sports Therapy: Exploring innovation in research, education and/or professional practice. Integrating evidence informed practice and the appreciation of wider health care issues to produce a justified innovation.
Sports Therapy Practice: This unit builds on and further develops your skills to plan, implement and monitor injury prevention strategies and return to play programmes that involve a comprehensive understanding of components of sport and exercise science. You’ll gain an understanding of the relationship between the sports therapist, other organisations and agencies and reflect upon experiences in sports therapy practice.
Service Improvement Project: The purpose of this unit is to provide an opportunity to undertake interprofessional project work with a variety of health practitioners and develop your skills in team working. Collaborative working is considered an essential skill for sports therapy practice.
Research Project: You will carry out a programme of independent research involving either the gathering primary data or being involved in analysis of existing data. This will enable you to evaluate findings in the context of a critical review of published literature and present the results and conclusions of a substantive piece of research.
Working in a sports therapy clinic- either setting up your own practice or working for others
Working with all levels of sports teams for both injury prevention and injury rehabilitation
Researching musculoskeletal function and performance in relation to sports injuries and sports therapy
Working in the health and fitness industry
You will also develop transferable skills such as time management, managing data, project management, enhanced communication skills and critical thinking skills.
