Occupational Therapy News June 2020 | Page 12

RCOT calls for collaboration to help RCOT is calling on all practitioners, service managers and departmental leads to work creatively and collaboratively with neighbouring universities delivering pre-registration occupational therapy programmes to explore what you can do to support students to access the placements. Many practice placements were postponed or lost entirely as services shifted focus to respond to the global pandemic, while many students have entered the workforce on temporary schemes, despite the potential delay that this may bring to their graduation. RCOT has worked with education providers to explore how the required 1,000 hours of successful practice-based learning might reasonably be calculated within the requirements set out by the World Federation of Occupational Therapists. While this will help to ease the pressures, RCOT is also calling for everyone to do what they reasonably can to ensure that we have the future workforce available to meet the rapidly increasing demand for occupational therapy services. Dr Jo Watson, RCOT assistant director – education and research, said: ‘We are calling upon colleagues to join the collective effort to ensure that we are able to support preregistration students to complete their programmes of study as close to the originally intended graduation date as reasonably possible. This will sustain the workforce supply pipeline and bring skilled, competent graduates to the workplace to join you in taking on the challenges and opportunities that the health and care landscape presents to us all as we move through and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Glasgow students outstrip fundraising targ patients Glasgow Caledonian University’s Occupational Therapy Society has r target to provide essential and luxury items for patients in hospitals a The students have so far raised £1,085 and helped to fund items care home. Items include snacks, toiletries, and activities including co magazines and pens. For more information, visit the society’s Twitter feed at: www.twitte