Physiotherapist at Southern Health and Social Care Trust

The job at Southern Health and Social Care Trust

Physiotherapists assess and treat problems with movement and function caused by injury, illness, disability or ageing. They take a history, examine movement, strength and joint range, then agree goals and deliver treatment through exercise prescription, manual therapy, education, pacing advice and structured rehabilitation. Specialties include musculoskeletal outpatients, respiratory care on wards and in intensive care, neurological rehabilitation after stroke or spinal injury, paediatrics, pelvic health and care of older people. Many also work in sport, occupational health and private practice. People of all ages with musculoskeletal pain and injury, neurological conditions, respiratory and cardiac disease, frailty and falls risk, long-term conditions, and those recovering from surgery or critical illness.

At an integrated care organisation such as Southern Health and Social Care Trust, that work means a caseload that can cross the ward, the outpatient clinic and the patient’s home inside a single organisation, because acute and community services sit under one employer. Rotations can follow the pathway rather than the building, so you can see the same patient group in hospital and at home without applying for a different job. Across the profession as a whole, physiotherapists work in settings including NHS acute trust, outpatient musculoskeletal clinics, intensive care and respiratory wards, community and home-based rehabilitation and neurological rehabilitation units — an organisation of this type will run some of those services and not others, which is why two posts with the same job title in the same city can be very different jobs.

Pay is not an employer decision. Agenda for Change is negotiated nationally and set separately in each of the four nations, so Southern Health and Social Care Trust pays band 5 exactly what every other NHS employer in Northern Ireland pays it: £31,049 at the bottom of the band on the 2025/26 scale. For context, median full-time pay across all occupations in Northern Ireland was £37,052 in 2025. What genuinely differs between two employers is the caseload, how rotations are structured, how much protected time you get for supervision and continuing professional development, how much band 6 progression is built into the establishment, and how far you travel between sites. Those are the questions worth asking at interview.

This page states no figure specific to Southern Health and Social Care Trust because none is published in the open data. When the workforce and staff survey feeds include this organisation, the establishment size, the response rate and the theme scores will appear above.