I reached out to my current manager to ask could I come and shadow her team, and she said:“ I can do better than that. We have a job listed for a frailty OT”, suggesting I apply for the job role.”
If a role looks like a strong match, approaching the recruiter directly and making the case for occupational therapy can open a door that the job description had left closed.
The takeaway
Do not wait for the right advert. Use your network, attend sector events and make direct contact with organisations whose work interests you. RCOT’ s occupational therapy tips for primary care offer practical starting points that could be broadly applicable to practitioners exploring employment routes outside of statutory services. Access at rcot. co. uk / exploreresources / primary-care / occupationaltherapy-tips
Holding your ground: professional identity in new terrain
Working as an employed occupational therapist in a non-statutory setting often means being the only one in the room, and sometimes the only one in the organisation. That visibility is an opportunity, and it comes with responsibility.
Becky describes expanding her professional scope significantly in primary care, taking on skills that are unusual for occupational therapists and that required her to reframe how colleagues understood her role:‘ I’ ve become very medicalised in my job role, but I didn’ t want to become a nurse because I’ m so holistic in the way I look at patients.’
For Dinuli, the resistance she encountered in a previous role came not from organisational leadership, but from a long-established adjacent team being asked to work differently.‘ I was working in that environment where there was resistance to change. It wasn’ t everybody; there were very much [ people who were ] supporters of occupational therapy.’
The harder challenge in non-OT-led organisations more broadly, she reflects, is often simpler: leaders do not recruit occupational therapists because they do not yet know what occupational therapists can do.
What connects both experiences is the importance of being clear, from the outset, about what occupational therapy is and what it can do. This is not about justifying your presence, it’ s about practising within your scope of competence, as set out by the Health and Care Professions Council( HCPC), while building the professional relationships that allow your role to grow.
The takeaway
Before accepting a role, consider the organisational culture, whether there is existing understanding of occupational therapy and whether you will have access to professional supervision and peer support. If you have questions about scope of practice or professional boundaries, refer to RCOT’ s scope of practice briefing; https:// bit. ly / 3QJyr1i and engage with the support available through RCOT’ s Independent Practice Professional Network.
Independent practice does not require you to work alone or to set up your own business. Employed roles outside statutory services offer a different kind of professional freedom; the space to apply your skills in ways that a single-system job may not allow, to build relationships across sectors and to shape a career that reflects who you are as an occupational therapist. The starting point is simply being willing to look beyond where you already are.
JOU YIN TEOH, RCOT Professional Advisor for Independent Practice
Occupational Therapy in Independent Practice 7