The concept of promoting occupational therapy as a career to pre-GCSE students , by current occupational therapy students who are of a relatively similar age is innovative , allowing them to relate to each other …”
engagement , recognise successes and achieve the aims of the project .
We made changes based on the feedback from both pre-GCSE students and facilitators , which will help us continue to create an innovative design appropriate for our target audience and support both engagement and ease of use .
Benjamin Jones , a Senior Teaching Fellow and Admissions Tutor in the School of Health Sciences at the university commented : ‘ The occupational therapy undergraduate team took a dynamic approach to improving awareness of the profession . Their customised engagement highlighted how they had deeply considered their target audience and ensured the selected activities provided humour and challenge in the right proportions .
‘ Slight modifications to the original pilot enhanced the product , which further prompted accurate reflection for the audience on how they might one day fit the profession while challenging preconceptions to what the profession does and has to offer .
‘ This landed well with the audience and aptly made use of the entire team ’ s skillsets . The scaling of this project will do wonders for occupational therapy awareness and I eagerly await to see the impact , with regular use , to the communities experiencing this wonderful outreach session .’
We took part in a ‘ Design Showcase ’ as part of our academic module , whereby academics and clinicians provided us with valuable feedback that also helped highlight areas for improvement . This included spotlighting areas of mental health , as well as physical health , promting us to adapt our activities and presentation to bring more attention to the dual training of occupational therapy .
Julian Pearce , Head of Department at the university ’ s School of Health Sciences added : ‘ The concept of promoting occupational therapy as a career to pre-GCSE students , by current occupational therapy students who are of a relatively similar age , is innovative , allowing them to relate to each other .
‘ Through discussion with the occupational therapy students at their Design Showcase , I was impressed by their creative approach , which is proving to be both impactful and meaningful .’
On 14 October 2022 , we attended an Allied Health Professionals Careers event at Alton College , run by the 350 + NHS careers programme . Here we were able to adapt some of our activities to showcase the work of occupational therapists to children from two junior schools , one secondary school , an independent school , and to health T-level students .
Over three quarters of the students at that event said they are now considering a career in the NHS , potentially indicating that interactive workshops can have a positive impact on their perception of a healthcare career .
Our future plans
To promote sustainability and longevity , we are running a ‘ train the trainer ’ workshop to enable occupational therapy students from the University of Southampton to facilitate the outreach project .
We are planning to visiting a local college in Southampton to carry out our project and we hope to take along an occupational therapy student ambassador with us , to show them how our project runs and to prepare them to take the lead once we have graduated .
Positive implications for sustainability and future practice
Studies have shown that a barrier to considering occupational therapy as a career is the general lack of awareness of the profession ( Collins and Carr 2018 ). Accessibility to occupational therapy as a career is lacking , particularly for minority groups , which is a current occupational injustice issue ( Colaianni et al 2022 ).
Within the project we created sustainable resources , whereever possible . These included a facilitator pack containing proformas , a risk assessment , presentations and necessary resources . The pack included an inventory checklist with a sign in / out sheet , to ensure all resources get returned to the box .
We kept costs were to a minimum by using freely available resources from our university ,
26 OTnews February 2023