Physiotherapy | Hanze UAS (2024)

What will you be studying?

From the very first year, you get to know the human body inside and out, by practising on yourself and your fellow students, while gaining a solid medical-biological foundation. You will learn where which muscles and joints are located and how they work, discover different health conditions and work on behavioural change, entrepreneurship and (intercultural) communication.

Projects with impact

What makes studying at Hanze UAS unique is that you will work on projects for real clients and contribute to concrete solutions for current issues impacting society. Below, you can find some examples of projects our students engage in.

About this programme

If you choose Physiotherapy, you will learn all about how people move and how to help people of all ages and backgrounds with different mobility problems. You will ensure that your knowledge, treatment skills and attention will help people regain healthy movement so they can live healthily and actively. Whether you teach nurses how to cope better with heavy physical labour or you are treating an elderly man with a painful knee, as a physiotherapist you work with different target groups and different methodologies to get people moving healthily again.

During this programme you will be trained to become a confident and committed physiotherapist who is able to make informed choices about the care of patients. You enjoy the challenge of helping people with very different mobility problems. Think of a construction worker with back pain, a basketball player undergoing rehabilitation or a patient who has had a stroke and is learning to grab something again. After your studies, you can specialise further, for example in paediatric physiotherapy, sports physiotherapy or manual therapy.

The study programme offers a broad mix of medical-biological knowledge, physiotherapy treatment methods, behavioural psychology and communication and entrepreneurship, among other things. You will learn all the ins and outs of the human body, learn how to communicate well with your patients and investigate the connection between behaviour, environment, disease and health. You will learn which treatment plans and coaching you can utilise to make an immediate difference in people's active lifestyle. Would you like to get and keep people moving healthily again? Then Physiotherapy is for you!

Course overview

Year 1

In your first year, you build up your basic knowledge and skills as a physiotherapist. From anatomy to pathology and patient demonstrations to a small internship. You will learn all about the construction and functioning of bones, muscles and joints. Conversation skills and health behaviour are covered during the first year too. Also, you will visit a physiotherapy practice and practice a lot with and on your fellow students. Where are the important muscles and joints located? And how do you perform a physiotherapy examination, for example? Furthermore, you will learn about evidence-based practice where you use the patient and therapist experiences together with research findings to determine the best treatment. In addition, you develop your entrepreneurial attitude and work on your own professional development.

Year 2

During the second year you continue to work on your knowledge and skills as a Physiotherapist. The movement problems and topics you will study are more complex and specialised. For example, you will learn all about treating patients with heart or lung problems, and neurological conditions such as dementia or Parkinson's disease. Moreover, you will learn to justify treatment choices. You will also get to work with patients dealing with physical problems for which you cannot find a simple solution.

Years 3 and 4

In the third and fourth year, you will increasingly apply the knowledge and skills learnt in the first two years of practice. This is how you develop as a physiotherapist who gets and keeps people moving. During year three and the first semester of year four, you will take a mandatory minor, which will be physiotherapy-related. You will start your external clinical and you will have the possibility to choose an exchange programme or minor of your choice. It is possible to choose an exchange programme or minor abroad at one of our partner universities, or you can choose from one of the options at Hanze UAS, Groningen. The minors Future Health or are just a few of the many available options. Finally, during your graduation clinical and assignment you will work on a physiotherapy case in a real organisation.

Throughout the programme, you will also work on your entrepreneurial attitude, your own professional development and your research skills. This way, you will know how to work evidence-based when you graduate as a physiotherapist and be able to start your own practice, for example.

After your studies

Pursue a master's degree

Having completed your bachelor's degree, you can also opt for a master's degree. This is a one-year to three-year study programme at a university of applied sciences or a research university.

Career prospects

With a Physiotherapy diploma, you have a broad future. Internationally, this programme is highly regarded. In your own country as well as abroad, you can work at organisations in the field of healthcare, education, business and research. Most physiotherapists work in healthcare, for example in hospitals, nursing homes, physiotherapy practices, health centres or rehabilitation centres. But you can also work in educational organisations such as medical nurseries or schools for deaf, blind or otherwise disabled children. You may go into education and teach future colleagues. Business is also one of the possibilities. Think, for example, of developing programmes to improve working conditions for health insurance companies or occupational health and safety services. Of course, you can also work in a gym or set up your own practice.