Guides
Guides to getting into the allied health professions
8 written guides to the decisions the data cannot make for you: which route to take, what the funding rules mean for your budget, how the application is actually judged, and which of the 15 allied health careers fits the way you want to work.
Choosing a profession
Speech and language therapy or occupational therapy?
Two professions applicants apply to interchangeably, and shouldn’t. What each is for, how the work differs day to day, and how to tell which suits you.
The small allied health professions nobody tells you about
Orthoptics, prosthetics and orthotics, operating department practice and the arts therapies: real careers, shorter queues, and almost no careers advice.
Getting in
Choosing a route
Where to study
Money
Applying
Allied health interview questions, and how to answer them
The interview formats universities use, the questions that actually come up, and a method for answering the scenario ones without losing the station.
Writing a personal statement for an allied health course
How to answer UCAS’s three questions for an allied health course, with before-and-after examples and the lines to cut from every draft.
How these fit with the rest of the site
The generated pages answer questions with figures: what a course costs, which universities are approved for a profession, what band 5 pays in Wales this year, which bursary covers which route. Every one of those numbers is traceable to the body that published it.
These guides do the other half. They explain what the numbers mean when you are the person choosing — why a shorter master's is not automatically the cheaper option, why the border that matters for funding is the one around your university rather than your home, why the profession with the fewest applicants may also be the one you have to move for. Where a guide needs a figure, it links to the page that carries it and its source, rather than repeating a number that will go stale.
Nothing here is advice about your individual circumstances. Funding rules in particular change every academic year — confirm anything you are relying on with the administering body before you commit to a course.
Professions these guides cover
Art therapist
Children, young people, adults and older people living with mental health difficulties, trauma, learning disabilities, neurodivergence, dementia, life-limiting illness or emotional and behavioural difficulties.
Diagnostic radiographer
Patients of all ages, from newborns to older people, who need imaging for diagnosis, screening, monitoring or image-guided treatment, including trauma, cancer, cardiac and emergency patients.
Dietitian
People of all ages with medical conditions affected by diet — including digestive, kidney, metabolic and swallowing disorders, malnutrition, food allergy, obesity and eating disorders — as well as healthy populations.
Dramatherapist
People of all ages — children, young people, adults and older people — with emotional, behavioural or mental health difficulties, learning disabilities, physical disabilities, neurological conditions or serious illness.
Music therapist
People of all ages with emotional or mental health difficulties, learning or physical disabilities, developmental conditions including autism, neurological conditions, dementia, and life-limiting or palliative illness.
Occupational therapist
People of all ages recovering from surgery, stroke or injury, and people living with mental illness, learning disability, dementia, long-term conditions or physical disability who want to live more independently.
Operating department practitioner
Patients of all ages undergoing planned or emergency surgery and other procedures requiring anaesthesia, alongside surgeons, anaesthetists, theatre nurses and support workers.
Orthoptist
Babies, children and adults with squint, amblyopia, double vision, reduced or unstable vision, and patients with stroke, acquired brain injury, thyroid eye disease, glaucoma, diabetes or neurological conditions.
Paramedic
People of all ages with acute illness, injury, mental health crisis or long-term conditions who call for urgent help, from cardiac arrest and major trauma to falls, breathing problems and end-of-life care at home.
Physiotherapist
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.
Prosthetist/orthotist
People with limb loss including military veterans and people with vascular disease or diabetes, children with cerebral palsy and congenital conditions, and adults with arthritis, neurological conditions, sports injuries or spinal deformity.
Speech and language therapist
Children and adults with speech, language, communication or swallowing needs, including people after stroke or brain injury, autistic people, people with learning disabilities, progressive neurological conditions, head and neck cancer and voice disorders.
Therapeutic radiographer
Adults and children having radiotherapy for cancer, and their families and carers, throughout planning, daily treatment, side-effect management and follow-up.
Look the numbers up
- All allied health professions — What each one does, and every way in
- Course finder — Every approved pre-registration course in the UK
- Compare training routes — Degree, master’s or apprenticeship
- Degree apprenticeships — Earn while you train
- Funding and bursaries — All four UK nations, scheme by scheme
- NHS pay bands — Agenda for Change, band by band
- Job market — Where each profession’s workforce sits
- Universities — Providers with approved programmes
Where this page’s data comes from
These guides are written editorial. The profession count, profession names, course counts and starting bands shown on this page come from the sources below.
- HCPC register summary and registrant snapshots (aggregate)Health and Care Professions Council · No open licence stated; HCPC copyright · checked 3 September 2026
- HCPC approved programmes directoryHealth and Care Professions Council · No open licence stated; HCPC copyright · checked 3 September 2026
- healthcareers.nhs.ukCited page
- ons.gov.ukCited page
- hee.nhs.ukCited page
- faq.nhsbsa.nhs.ukCited page
- faq.nhsbsa.nhs.ukCited page
- faq.nhsbsa.nhs.ukCited page
- instituteforapprenticeships.orgCited page
- healthcareers.nhs.ukCited page