Name: Kim Buchholtz
Role/Occupation: Lecturer in Physiotherapy, University of Cape Town
Country: South Africa
Kim Buchholtz is a lecturer in physiotherapy; her career is an interesting combination of work in physiotherapy and education. She currently teaches the Undergraduate BSc Physiotherapy and MSc Exercise and Sports Physiotherapy courses and also supervises students in their undergraduate research and Masters degrees.
Although Buchholtz was always interested in physiotherapy or sports science, she wasn’t sure what to study and so after high school, she spent a gap year in the United Kingdom (UK) working at a school. She knew it would be difficult to get into the program, but took a chance and applied and got in to study her BSc Physiotherapy from 2002 to 2005 at the University of Cape Town (UCT). She was convinced that she had made the right decision in her third year of study when clinical rotations through hospitals and clinics began. She has loved working with patients ever since.
Buchholtz’s vast career spans community service for a year at the Airforce Base at Langebaanweg, three years at a private sports and orthopaedic practice in Vredehoek, she started her own practice, Kim Buchholtz Physiotherapy, she completed a post-graduate certificate in Orthopaedic Manipulative Therapy and then completed an MPhil in Sports Physiotherapy at UCT by coursework and dissertation. She has also worked with IPL cricket players while they were in Cape Town, as well as a number of South African figure skaters. She has also been the head physiotherapist for the Australian Blind Cricket team for three World Cup tournaments, held in Cape Town (2014), India (2017) and the United Arab Emirates (2018). She recently started her PhD, which focuses on the investigation of injury and factors affecting mountain bikers, and sold her practice at the beginning of this year to allow herself a bit more time for the research, whilst also working her part-time job at UCT.
One of the things that Buchholtz enjoys about being a physiotherapist is “working with patients and watching them make progress and improve their quality of life as they heal from injury.” Although she no longer does clinical work, she gets “a huge amount of fulfilment in seeing young adults grow to love physiotherapy and learn... to train competent, well-balanced physiotherapists who will go out into South Africa and improve the lives of people around them.”
Buchholtz feels that despite physiotherapy being a female-dominated field, sometimes female physiotherapists are still seen merely as massage therapists or carers, but believes “as more women move into research in this field, our credibility is improving.” Although she is not sure if “female researchers are taken as seriously as the male researchers just yet” and has heard of some females being treated badly at conferences in spite of being guest and keynote speakers.
Her advice to young women aspiring to enter the field of physiotherapy is “to take opportunities as they present themselves” regardless if they pay well as they give great exposure. It is most important “to build a network… Sometimes this means attending courses or conferences and introducing yourself to leaders in your field… The more people that you know globally in your field, the more opportunities will present themselves.”
With regards to her opinion of physiotherapy in Africa, she feels that funding is always a problem, unfortunately, and particularly in the area of sports and exercise medicine which is still seen as an ‘elite’ field.” But she also believes that this will change with time as “an understanding of the true benefit in using physical activity for disease prevention and management will open doors for funding.” Buchholtz believes “that physiotherapy is really well placed to improve the quality of life of our population, not just in treating injuries, but in offering physical activity programmes to improve overall health.”
Read more about Kim Buchholtz’s vast diverse career spanning over 12 years in the insightful interview below.
Kim Buchholtz was interviewed by Dhruti Dheda, the founder of the African Steminist on behalf of Geeky Girl Reality. The full interview can be found here.
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