Occupational Therapy News OTnews January 2019

PROFESSIONAL RESOURCES RCOT contributes to new CPD principles in health and social care BJOT NEXT ISSUE New CPD principles for staff in health and social care settings have been developed by a group including RCOT. The document, prepared by the Interprofessional CPD and Lifelong Learning UK Working Group which includes representation from RCOT, is the first update in 12 years. It brings together over 20 professional bodies and trade unions, including other nursing, midwifery and AHP bodies and Unison. The five principles state that CPD and lifelong learning should: • be each person’s responsibility, made possible and supported by employers; • benefit service users; • improve the quality of service delivery; • be balanced and relevant to each person’s area of practice or employment; and • be recorded and show the effect on each person’s area of practice. The new principles supersede those in the current RCOT Code of Ethics in appendix two. That will be updated in due course, but members should use these new principles in concert with the existing Code of Ethics to guide their lifelong learning activity. Dr Stephanie Tempest, professional development manager at RCOT, said: ‘What is so important in these principles is how employees, employers and the wider system are jointly responsible for CPD and lifelong learning. We want to see these principles used by occupational therapists and support staff to structure conversations about how they continue to learn, develop and take on new skills throughout their career.’ The document will be available at on the RCOT website at: www.rcot.co.uk/rcot-standards-and-ethics. 44 OTnews January 2019 February’s British Journal of Occupational Therapy (BJOT) is a special issue on community-based services, guest edited by Professor Avril Drummond. She has selected a range of international research from the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Sweden, Australia and Canada and introduces the collection in an editorial outlining the topics covered. Research in this special issue includes several studies involving survey and interview approaches. The results of a national UK survey examining falls prevention in primary care services, from McIntyre et al, garnered some interesting and thought-provoking contributions from general practitioners and also revealed the difficulties of getting survey responses. In a Swedish study, Zingmark et al used a web-based survey, collecting data from occupational therapists and physiotherapists about the interventions they used in delivering reablement, and from this identifying a need for critical reflection on the kind and duration of interventions used. Canadian researchers Lauckner et al interviewed 12 occupational therapists from across the country, along with focus groups, to examine the challenges occupational therapists faced in developing community-centre approaches. Tieck et al reported on data gathered from interviews in people with dyspnoea, to record their lived experiences of having the condition. The authors concluded by noting the importance of functional participation for improved engagement and improved quality of life and suggest there is scope for targeted occupational therapy involvement. Lorenzo and colleagues argue for occupational therapists’ role in improving the lifestyle of disabled young people through occupational interventions, in particular considering the wider-ranging positive consequences of developing skills in sports. In their mixed methods study, Boland et al found that a six-week programme focused on self-management delivered to participants with cancer appeared to assist their transition from treatment to survivorship. All articles are published online at the journal’s OnlineFirst page as soon as ready. Visit BJOT via your member login at www.rcot.co.uk to browse these and other recent publications in full. Don’t forget our call for research contributions for a special issue on ‘Optimising children’s participation for health and wellbeing’, deadline 31 January 2019. For more information visit: http://journals.sagepub.com/page/bjo/call- for-papers.

Occupational Therapy News OTnews January 2019 | Page 44