Physiotherapist at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust

The job at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation 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 acute trust such as Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, that work means an acute hospital caseload — inpatients on the wards, emergency and critical care, theatres and diagnostics, and hospital outpatient clinics, with the working day shaped by admissions, ward rounds and discharge planning. Newly qualified posts here are usually rotational: four to six months at a time in a different clinical area, which is how you find out what you want to specialise in before you commit. 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 Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust pays band 5 exactly what every other NHS employer in England pays it: £32,073 at the bottom of the band on the 2026/27 scale. For context, median full-time pay across all occupations in the North East was £34,403 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.