After your foundation programme, you can apply for paid specialty training to become a sports and exercise doctor, which will take a minimum of six or seven years.

SEM physicians based within a team/club are frequently required to travel with the athletes. This can be for a match, training camp or a large event like an European Championship or Olympic tournament. Jobs across public, private and military sectors The successful candidate will be responsible for the delivery of physiotherapy and medical cover for our Under 9 to Under 16 year old players. And where appropriate to work alongside the head of medical. encourage physical activity and the implementation of public health policy for physical activity programmes to improve public health He added that he had not been formally interviewed and had not even formally applied for the post: “There hasn't been an official appointment—there is no correspondence to quote”. Although last season may not have been deemed as successful as Wolves’ previous two campaigns in the Premier League, the end position maintained the club’s Premier League status, and at the start of this pre-season, Chakraverty sat down with his restructured performance and medicine team to analyse what went right in the past and what can be learned.After being a general Sport Doctor, you could look to specialise in a specific part of the field. You may start working for a small/ local organisation or team, but during your career you could look to aim for larger and more prominent organisations. What are the best things about becoming a Sport Doctor? We’re not making wholesale changes,” Chakraverty added, “we are bringing direction, but will remain connected with our present first team staff who have brought the club so far in recent years.

Ensuring that player’s cardiac screening is up to date and protocols are put in place to provide regular screening of playersThis broader range of experience of the chartered physiotherapist is also important for other reasons. Leaving aside the different levels of qualification, perhaps the most important difference between non-chartered and chartered physiotherapists is that the latter will have carried out part of their training, and will probably have spent some of their professional lives, within the NHS and perhaps also in private practice. In these contexts, they will have absorbed the culture of a health care system in which their work will have been subject to the scrutiny of their seniors and their peers, and in which there are relatively well established criteria of what constitutes good quality care, both in terms of technical and ethical considerations. By contrast, ex-players who have taken the FA diploma are likely to have spent much, or even all, their working lives within football and will have absorbed the culture, not of the health care system, but of professional football. The standards of care with which they will be familiar will not be the clinical and ethical standards that apply within the health service, but those that derive from the culture of professional football, some aspects of which, notably the strong constraints on players to “play hurt”—that is, to continue to play with injury and pain, if necessary with the help of pain killing injections and even if this risks further damage—are not conducive to good clinical practice. It is not suggested that ex-players who have become physiotherapists knowingly cut corners in terms of quality of care; however, they have not had the same exposure as chartered physiotherapists to the generally higher standards of clinical and ethical care expected of those who work within the NHS, and they have no knowledge of standards of care other than those that apply within football. In this context it was noticeable that, although the sample of physiotherapists interviewed was quite small (of the ten physiotherapists, six were chartered and four not chartered), there did appear to be an appreciable tendency for chartered physiotherapists to be more critical of the quality of care offered within professional football. This is a good example of what one physiotherapist described as getting a job “through the old boy network of `I know somebody who, etc.' ”. Working with elite athletes comes with a premium with regards to medical indemnity. The stakes when something goes wrong are high, and doctors can be sued by players, clubs and third parties, which is reflected in the fees charged by insurers. What do I need to get into SEM? Another key addition is that of Dr Kate Ludlam ( pictured below) who joins as first-team performance psychologist, having previously worked with Wolves Academy. She has also just returned from the Olympics in her role with GB Boxing. support sportspeople and assist them in maximising performance, reducing injury time and minimising the co-morbidity associated with sporting participation

He will ensure we are looking after all aspects of the players’ health throughout the club, including, but by no means limited to, players’ cardiac screening, their immunisations, their blood tests and our clinical governance, because unless these are taken care of, we cannot be in a position to concentrate efforts on the performance side." In this varied role you will assist with clinical diagnoses, delivering treatment, and supporting the Club’s Academy players with the prevention of injury and illness. So once this specialty is established, does Mike think there will be a surge of job vacancies in this area? “There are always going to be people there for elite athletes but there are never going to be that many jobs available for everyone who wants to do it. Amateur teams always need doctors but they have no money to pay, so there will never be that many people working in the area—that's why many people are doing it for the love of it. The job is a team effort. Everyone has an individual area of expertise and when dealing with elite athletes you need to treat them properly.” We are currently recruiting for a qualified Physiotherapist to join our Academy medical team, working closely with Academy players and staff. The successful candidate will assist in the operational delivery of medical support services within training and match play. Wolves is, and continues to be, a very humble club. It’s a family-orientated club, which may appear to be punching above its weight, but we’ve got to develop that ‘big club’, elite-sport mentality within that framework to become more consistent. We can’t go all out, thinking it’s all about success and in so doing, lose what Wolves is all about, but we do need to refocus.”

We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced, enthusiastic and hardworking Academy U7 to U16 Physiotherapist to join our business and perform a key role within Nottingham Forest Football Club. To assist in the development and implementation of best medical practice protocols, including the club's Emergency Action Plans.