FEATURE STUDENT EDUCATION
The challenges and benefits of offering pre-registration placements during the COVID-19 pandemic
Seashell Trust frequently offers practice placement opportunities to occupational therapy students , and throughout the pandemic has kept up this vital offer , despite a reduced workforce . Rachel Johnson , Kate Duggan and Sofia Lallo look at one of the projects
Seashell Trust supports children and young people with complex needs and accompanying behavioural , sensory and communication difficulties . A multidisciplinary team enables children and young people at Seashell to experience maximum learning opportunities at our school and college and independence within their home or residential setting .
The COVID-19 pandemic presented significant challenges to service continuation , including occupational therapy for our children and young people .
Seashell has positive relationships with local universities and frequently offers practice placement opportunities . During the lockdown period , we saw an increase in placement requests as opportunities were in short supply .
Despite having to manage with a reduced workforce for most of this period , between September 2020 and May 2021 Seashell offered seven practice placements to occupational therapy students from three different universities .
All placements used a blend of face-to-face and remote learning , following the government guidelines to ‘ work from home if you can ’ ( GOV . UK 2021 ).
The occupational therapy team considered how placement opportunities could be promoted while protecting the health and safety of students , children and young people , and our staff .
Seashell was already exploring the use of remote delivery and was using telepractice to ensure continuation of essential elements of the service . This was primarily focused on ensuring that families could receive the support and specialist training they needed .
This service required rapid implementation , in line with other therapy services around the world ( Camden and Silva 2021 ).
The occupational therapy team offered parent training and coaching relating to individualised sensory based interventions . This required creative thinking to ensure that strategies were identified that could easily be utilised in the home environment , using everyday objects .
Due to the accelerated pace of service development , capacity within the team was substantially reduced . This presented an opportunity for students on practice placement to support with a service evaluation of the implementation of telepractice , with guidance from the service manager .
Students were able to utilise their skills in reviewing the existing evidence base to complete a literature search regarding delivery of therapy via telepractice .
Following delivery of services via telepractice , the service manager conducted semi-structured interviews with parents regarding their experiences . Students were then able to apply their knowledge of research methods to complete a thematic analysis adhering to the six-step thematic analysis procedure ( Braun and Clarke 2006 ).
Due to the different stages of their training , peer learning opportunities were also presented , where the more experienced student mentored their peer .
An abstract was submitted and successfully accepted to the European Academy of Childhood Disability ( EACD ) conference ( 2021 ) relating to this service evaluation . Subsequently , an occupational therapy student on placement supported the team with development of a poster . This included collating a reference list and updating the literature search to ensure it incorporated recently-published evidence .
The activities outlined above provided opportunities for students to :
• apply their research skills in practice ;
40 OTnews August 2021