Welcome to another episode of The Words Matter Podcast.

As always, a huge thank you to those of you supporting the podcast via Patreon – you help enable these conversations to become possible. f you’d like to contribute you can visit Patreon.com/thewordsmatterpodcast – every little helps.

So, on this episode I’m continuing with the Outsider Series where I speak with clinicians who feel they’re outsiders of their profession; sharing their experiences, struggles and how things could maybe change.

And this may be the last outsider episode for a while, as I’m pausing the series to commence the much-anticipated clinical reasoning series, with some fantastic guests, so stay tuned, but there are plenty more outsiders planned to share their experiences.

Today I’m speaking with former osteopath Rob Jonah. Rob qualified as an osteopath in the UK a couple of years ago, having changing from his previous career as a plumber. He talks about his experience as a student and initial period in professional practice; a combination of which lead him to leave the osteopathy profession and return to his plumbing career.

Rob’s experience of being an osteopath is just that, his experience. And as you will hear it’s a largely negative one. However, I believe that by hearing his experience of how he entered the osteopathy profession and then abruptly left those of us in clinical education and leadership may learn how we can better develop new osteopaths who are on the edge of professional life and support new clinicians post-qualification.

I know Rob personally, and he’s not some disgruntled and bitter new grad that couldn’t hack it as an osteopath. It was clear to me that he wanted to make it work, he gave it his all and that leaving the profession was a difficult and undesired last resort. I hope and I think you will come to the same view after listening.

If you want to have more context into Rob’s decision to leave the osteopathic profession, you can check out the place where he announced his decision on his Instagram profile @How2Move.

Needless to say, it sounds like Rob’s in a much better place now and I wish him the best in his return to his previous career (see here).

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Dr. Sara Gottfried