OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY WEEK FEATURE
Our occupational therapy world The Norfolk Occupational Therapist Peer Group is a bi-monthly meeting for occupational therapy colleagues from all professional areas to share knowledge and ideas . Meetings have been running for four years and are open to students , lecturers , clinicians , researchers , support workers , private practitioners , retirees and more .
We have members in all areas of practice and have continued to meet virtually during the pandemic .
In our most recent meeting , the theme was Occupational Therapy Week 2020 and the # ChooseOT campaign .
Our first session , facilitated by Catherine Gray , encouraged attendees to use their creative skills to produce some Blackout Art and poetry from articles in OTnews magazines .
This mindful activity provided the opportunity to reflect on words and phrases that mean something to attendees in relation to their ‘ occupational therapy world ’. Sharing our art with each other demonstrated the variations , and underpinning commonalities , between our roles .
These commonalities were seen again in the word clouds we created together – focusing on our reasons to # ChooseOT and what we feel occupational therapy gives to people .
A second activity , led by Charmaine Chandler , asked attendees to think about the diversity within the profession . We produced collages of words and phrases , extracted from OTnews , to demonstrate the variety seen within the profession .
This also gave us an opportunity to reflect on what might be missing , in terms of representation , and how we can promote further diversity within our profession .
As a group , we discussed how we could spread our message to others and encourage them to # ChooseOT . We agreed that creating a Norfolk Occupational Therapist Peer Group website , alongside the existing social media pages , would be a way to present our # ChooseOT messages and reach a wider audience .
We thought that displaying our group members ’ occupational therapy journeys and stories would demonstrate the range of ways we have each joined the profession , as well as the variety of roles and settings we work in .
We considered COVID-19 restrictions and agreed that providing a link to our website would allow school age students to access the information they need to learn more about occupational therapy as a prospective career .
We are encouraging our members to submit blog posts for the website about their areas of work and to provide contact details if they are happy to be contacted by people who are interested in joining the profession and specific career pathways .
During Occupational Therapy Week , you told your stories about why you love being occupational therapists – you can find these stories on the # ChooseOT wall : www . rcot . co . uk / chooseot-stories .
We are pleased to have launched our new website at the end of Occupational Therapy Week ( www . norfolkotpeergroup . wordpress . com ) and hope that it will help us to reach more occupational
therapists across Norfolk and continue to build our group as a platform for networking , support and sharing of resources .
Catherine Gray , co-founder of the Norfolk Occupational Therapy Peer Group , senior perinatal occupational therapist and independent occupational therapist , Charmaine Chandler , lecturer in occupational therapy , University of East Anglia and Norfolk Occupational Therapist Peer Group committee member , and Ellen Cole , occupational therapist and Norfolk Occupational Therapist Peer Group member . Contact the Norfolk Occupational Therapist Peer Group : OTpeergroup @ nsft . nhs . uk or Twitter : @ norfolk _ ot
Over 2,300 stories shared about why our members love being occupational therapists
OTnews December 2020 19