Student Highlight: Where Are They Now?
Ciara Horan | University of Brighton, United Kingdom
After leaving Stanford Sports Medicine, Ciara moved to Oxford, UK to start work in a private physiotherapy practice with Total Rehab Solutions; treating both private patients to include athletic individuals. She also worked as the sole Physiotherapist for the Oxford Men’s Gaelic Football team who went on to win their County Championship final for the first time in 23 years. Six months later, Ciara began working as an outpatient Physiotherapist with Care UK. Although this post included mostly working with the general public it provided her with great experience having first hand access to diagnostic imaging resources which allowed her to progress her skill-set with requesting appropriate diagnostic images, disclosing results to individuals and making independent decisions as when to refer the individual to secondary care. She was also able to progress her skills with rehabilitation pre and post operative patients. Ciara worked in close connection with extended scope practitioners gaining further insight into when to refer for corticosteroid injections and rehabilitation progression.
During her time working with Care UK, Ciara also progressed her CPD to include achieving masters level credits for the Foundation Level Acupuncture Course, which she currently practices in clinic. In August 2016, Ciara moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland where she works as an outpatient musculoskeletal physiotherapist where she works alongside Orthopaedic consultants, senior physiotherapy staff, general practitioners and extended scope practitioners.
Ciara remarks, “My time at Stanford Sports Medicine was truly inspirational. The opportunity of fulfilling a one year internship with Stanford Sports Medicine certainly became, what once seemed impossible, a dream achieved. Working as a health professional with the athletes allowed me not only gain a professional skill set development, it also provided me with great insight into the personal day to day life of the individual athletes, highlighting real academic and professional commitment.”
She continues, “The hard work and continuous effort by all members of staff was so rewarding to see. A truly excellent standard of care was provided for each individual athlete; from the excellent standard of treatment and assessment technique, to the equipment provided for rehabilitation, to constant open contact and communication allowance between trainers and athletes, excellent communication between athletic training department/physiotherapy department/strength and conditioning coaches and sports medicine physicians. I found that I truly enjoy working as part of a multidisciplinary team.” Her time working with women’s soccer, and in particular with the women’s gymnastics team sparked an interest for Ciara in developing her Physiotherapy career into the field of women’s health related issues alongside other assessment and rehabilitation tools. She has since completed the introduction to pelvic floor function and dysfunction course along with Clinical Yoga Practice level 1, and she plans to complete additional training with the goal of teaching clinical yoga practices in clinic.
“Working with Stanford Sports Medicine department instilled a passion in treating and assessing individuals to the best of my ability. Certainly since leaving Stanford in 2013 I have been offered job opportunities that I never would have been offered without having had this once in a lifetime experience.”
