Artesis Hogeschool Antwerpen

Physiotherapy is a health care profession that provides treatment to individuals to develop, maintain and restore maximum movement and function throughout life. This includes providing treatment in circumstances where movement and function are threatened by aging, injury, disease or environmental factors.

 

Physiotherapy is concerned with identifying and maximizing quality of life and movement potential within the spheres of promotion, prevention, treatment/intervention and rehabilitation. This encompasses physical, psychological, emotional and social well being. It involves the interaction between physiotherapist, patients/clients, other health professionals, families, care givers and communities in a process where movement potential is assessed and goals are agreed upon, using knowledge and skills unique to physiotherapists.

 

Physiotherapy has many specialties including cardiopulmonary, geriatrics, neurology, orthopaedics and paediatrics, to name some of the more common areas.

 

Physiotherapists practice in many settings, such as outpatient clinics or offices, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, skilled nursing facilities, extended care facilities, private homes, education and research centres, schools, hospices, industrial workplaces or other occupational environments, fitness centres and sports training facilities. Physiotherapists can be either employed or self-employed. The diploma is recognised outside Belgium, which makes employment abroad a real possibility.

 

The study programme consists of a bachelor of sciences of Rehabilitation Science and Physiotherapy of 180 credits (3 years) and an academic master of sciences of Rehabilitation Science and Physiotherapy of 120 credits (2 years). The master of sciences programme is in collaboration with the Vrije Universiteit van Brussel and the University of Antwerp. It is possible to follow an individualized study programme.

 

During the final year of the master programme the student chooses a speciality such as: sports physiotherapy, manual (musculoskeletal) therapy, physiotherapy in internal disorders or physiotherapy in neurological disorders.

 

 

For a closer view on the curriculum, click here.

 

The goal of the academic bachelor programme is to prepare the student to enter the academic master programme. The goal of the academic master programme is to allow the student to develop competences that are needed for the physiotherapist to perform at the optimum level in different roles:

1. Clinician

2. Scientific researcher

3. Professional

 

The internship takes place in qualitatively high training centres, in both university and regional general hospitals. Students also train in outpatients' clinics, paediatric departments of hospitals, schools for special education, elderly homes and sport-centres. In this way the students get acquainted with a wide range of patients and disorders. The training centres are all located in the Antwerp region. A training abroad is possible within the Erasmus project (or as a 'free mover'). For this purpose a collaboration programme with foreign institutes has been developed.

 

To become a certified physiotherapist, the student has to defend an individually made dissertation before a jury at the end of the 2^nd master year. The student can choose his own subject, but it must belong to the field of physiotherapy, preferably to one of the research topics of one of the three physiotherapy research groups in our departement. The dissertation has to be based on scientific research and should be presented as a scientific article.