We believe that as practitioners we are tasked with educating and developing the next generation of Exercise Physiologists. START Training has agreements in place with the Univeristy of Queensland and Queensland University of Technology as a practicum site for final year Exercise Physiology placements. Our clientele population are mostly musculoskeletal rehabilitation across all demographics from weekend athlete to Australian representative athletes. We also host practitioners who are experts and renowned in their specialty areas across the industry.
Practicum opportunities at START are competitive where the Universities will assign the placement based off your preferences. If you have any questions we recommend to speak to your university practicum coordinator. If you are preparing for your practicum we recommend that you read the information presented below:
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START Training is a private clinic with predominately private referrals. Clients are our first priority in which we have very high expectations of students on placement. We expect you to be professional, maintain appropriate language and conversations, work hard, and be engaged with the clients.
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We recommend that you review your functional anatomy prior to commencing your placement at START Training. Our client population is predominately musculoskeletal and injury/surgical rehabilitation therefore we expect that you know the basics of human movement. We do not expect you to know everything on your first day of practicum as this experience will allow you to learn as you go with expert practitioners.
A foundational level of prior knowledge would be muscle, tendon and ligament attachment sites and function which is covered in your university program.
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On your first day we will decide upon set hours for your placement based on your availability. We expect you to stick to these hours and treat this placement as a full time job. If you cannot make the designated times or are running late please let your supervisor or the admin team know as soon as possible.
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University polo and appropriate sports shorts/tights are the designated dress code. We do expect you to look professional in the shorts/tights which must be an appropriate length and fabric for a workplace.
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Placements are commonly spread over a 6 week block. Each week will have a different focus for your learning in the area of Musculoskeletal Exercise Physiology. These are:
Week 1: Cueing and Patient Engagement
Week 2: Assessments: Lower Limb
Week 3: Assessments: Upper Limb
Week 4: Programming
Week 5: Clinical Reasoning
Week 6: Time to put it all together
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At the end of your placement block, we ask that you do a presentation on a topic of your choice. This is to display the theory that you have learnt at University and the clinical experience that you have gained on placement. This is not a conventional University assignments in which the practitioners are more interested in what does the research indicate - and in your clinical opinion - how does it apply to Musculoskeletal Exercise Physiology.