Look beneath the surface- CAO trends

It's always fascinating to see how quickly CAO college course demands respond to newspaper reports.
There have been recent reports in the papers about newly qualified physiotherapists experiencing difficulty getting jobs so demand for physiotherapy courses is down 34% in 2007.

Hopefully this is because people who were not really interested in physiotherapy have opted out given the newspaper reports.

However those of you who have your hearts set on physiotherapy don't despair. A little research will show the jobs scene is actually quite bright.

First of all it can be up to 4 years before you'll be looking for work so circumstances will have changed again.

Secondly from 1998 to 2005 there has been an increase of 57% in the the numbers employed and there is still a demand for additional physiotherapists.

Thirdly the HSE recruitment procedures are slow and complex and can take a year to complete for any of the clinical professions. We understand, though have not been able to confirm that there is only one male senior hospital physiotherapist in the country so setting up interview panels is a nightmare.
(Interview boards must be representative of both sexes)

Fourthly the professional associations (Irish Society of Chartered Physiotherapists, Psychological Society of Ireland, IMO etc) rightly insist all newly qualified graduates work under the supervision of a senior professional. Unfortunately these clinical supervision arrangements have not kept up with the volume of new positions being created. This is also partly responsible for the inability of newly qualified students to get positions. (This whole area needs a blog entry in itself to explain)
So at worst you may need to go abroad for a while to get the necessary experience.

So there is no lack of positions just problems trying to fill jobs under existing protocols.

So don't take newspaper reports at face value, do your own research before you decide against a career which may be ideal for you.

Note
The excellent FAS career directions data base has a section devoted to the employment outlook for most occupations.(Observe how recently the information has been updated, it can be upto 4 years old)

Click here to go to this web site

The Americans have an even bigger data base of everything you need to know about occupations.

Click here to go to this web site.

Keywords

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