Physio students are changing lives through community health promotion
Physiotherapy students are helping to improve the lives of hundreds of people, including children fighting cancer, by giving free physical activity advice to charities and community groups.
Forty-four Glasgow Caledonian University School of Health and Life Sciences MSc Physiotherapy (pre-reg) programme students have been working with 11 organisations in Scotland as part of their Health Promotion module.
The ‘soon-to-be’ physiotherapists have developed interactive and fun websites tailored to each charity or community group with public health information and online activities for keeping fit.
Groups involved are Calum’s Cabin, Men Matter Scotland, Glasgow Young Onset Parkinson’s Group, The Mungo Foundation, Vale of Leven Trust Active Travel Hub, Pollok Utd FC Walking Football Group, Marr College RFC Youth Academy, Active Life Club in Govanhill, Firhill Youth Project and Community Sport Hub, Partick Thistle Charitable Trust and Glen Oaks Housing Association.
Caroline Speirs, who launched Calum’s Cabins in 2007 to fulfil her 12-year-old son’s dying wish to provide holiday homes for children with cancer or cancer-related illness, praised the students and said they had great feedback from families.
Calum wanted a holiday retreat to be built near his home on the Isle of Bute so children with cancer could make their own special memories, so Caroline, her husband Duncan and daughter Jenna made it their mission and now they have retreats on the island, Ayrshire, Anstruther and Glasgow in his name.
Caroline has been working with four second-year Masters’ students - Catherine Hope, Jake McKenna, Lauren Reid and Fiona Beaton to get their interactive health and wellbeing platform up and running.
She said: “It has been amazing working with the students from Glasgow Caledonian University. We were honoured they chose us to help us promote health and wellbeing to our families, and work in partnership with them.
“Many of the children have issues with mobility during treatment and there is muscle wastage, so the students designed an interactive and fun online platform specifically for the children to help build muscle and involve their families.
“The students have been brilliant and the feedback from the families has been really positive, they all think it’s great and they’ve been enjoying it.”
Second-year student Morgan Nisbet, who also has a Bachelor in Physical Activity, Health and Wellbeing Bachelor degree, has been working closely with mental health charity Men Matter Scotland to find ways to boost activity among its members.
She said: “We got in touch with various charities and they were all very keen to get involved. I worked with Men Matter Scotland and a group of us visited them to find out what they thought they were missing and what the service users wanted from us so we could tailor the health promotion to their needs.
“They said the service that was missing was the promotion of physical activity, which is such a hugely important part of physical and mental wellbeing, so we were able to build a webpage specifically for them and the feedback has been great.”
The Masters’ degree module is led by Douglas Lauchlan, Senior Lecturer in Physiotherapy, Department of Physiotherapy and Paramedicine, and he is incredibly proud of what the students have achieved in the community.
He said: “The students have done an amazing job. As the University for the Common Good, working with and helping our communities is what Glasgow Caledonian is all about.
“The students on this programme have come from other degrees and want to become registered physiotherapists. This Masters degree is helping to solve a huge shortage in physiotherapists in Scotland and further afield. One of the legacies of COVID-19 is that we are going to have a lot of older, infirm and frail people with conditions that need rehabilitation.
“A lot of the traditional curricula centres around physiotherapists responding when patients get referred to them with problems associated with their health condition. Health promotion is about targeting these ‘at-risk’ populations and seeing them earlier in that referral process, so they don’t develop the same level of problems associated with their condition.
“This module is about getting the students to understand what the physical activity guidelines are and taking them out to the community to promote. We encouraged the students to get out there and work with people with specific needs, which is why we’ve been involved with the third sector like children’s cancer and men’s mental health charities.”
Pictured left to right - Glasgow Caledonian University Senior Lecturer in Physiotherapy Douglas Lauchlan, Calum’s Cabin Chairperson Caroline Speirs and student Morgan Nisbet.