Terri Ramsey Beavers If you’ve been considering osteopathy as a career path, you’ve probably already experienced how beneficial the care of an osteopath can be. While osteopathy offers much-needed relief from pain and support through healing for patients, there are also plenty of wonderful benefits for the practitioner. Let’s take a look at five of the most attractive reasons to pursue a career in osteopathy.
1. A world of opportunities
Whether you want to leave the northern hemisphere behind and become the best osteopath Melbourne has ever seen or dedicate your time to helping people in less affluent communities around the world, osteopathy opens up a world full of opportunities.
There’s a demand for osteopathy all across the globe, and if there isn’t an existing demand in a city you’re interested in moving to, you can certainly develop it by marketing yourself well and providing stellar service and effective treatment.
2. Genuinely help people
As an osteopath, you can have both an immediate and a long-term impact on the health and quality of life of your patients. This allows for a depth of job satisfaction that’s hard to beat. You’ll get to enjoy this whether you work in a big city or a small town. However, if you want to boost your ability to help those in need, there are plenty of opportunities. You could work with elderly patients or people with disabilities, or you may wish to go overseas to lend your services to impoverished communities.
3. Easy path to employment
Ask any osteopath, and they’ll likely tell you they had employment offers before they’d even graduated. Osteopathy is in high demand, so if you put in the work and develop your skills and knowledge, you should find your first job with ease.
4. Scope for self-employment
There are also plenty of opportunities for you to start your own business. You could establish your own practice or team up with a local gym or someone offering a complimentary service, like a massage therapist, dietician, or naturopath. This allows you to start out small, share expenses, and use an existing platform to build your own.
Even if you don’t launch your osteopathy business as part of an existing business, it’s worth making connections with local gyms, sporting goods retailers, yoga studios, and other relevant businesses to see if you can strike mutually beneficial partnerships.
5. Interesting areas of specialty
Depending on your interests and talents, you may wish to specialize in professional athletes, pregnancy and baby treatments, or even animals. There are many niches in which you can develop expertise, so if you’re passionate about sports, animal welfare, or any other relevant field, you may be able to bring that passion into your career as an osteopath.
6. Time spent with patients
While many GPs only spend 10 minutes with their patients, osteopaths generally spend 30 to 90 minutes with clients. This gives you time to get to know people and to ask the questions that will help you get to the bottom of what’s ailing them. It also makes for a more enjoyable workday as you’re not rushing through a packed waiting room.
Once people understand the benefits of osteopathy and the high demand for appointments, they tend to get into the rhythm and book their slots ahead of time to avoid disappointment.
Hopefully, this article has helped you gain more clarity and insight into whether you truly want to become an osteopath. If you do decide to follow this career path, you’ll have the above benefits and more to look forward to.