involved to plan a student learning opportunity embedded within the care home environment.
What did we do?
The teams from CABIS and Abbeymoor, alongside an academic tutor from Northumbria University, planned a final year placement opportunity for two BSc occupational therapy students, Elicia Bordoley and Chloe Stockdale.
Working more closely with communities and putting occupation at the forefront of practice is aligned to RCOT’ s Workforce Strategy( RCOT 2024) and we saw this as a way to equip our future practitioners with these experiences and perspectives.
Using The AHP Principles of Practice- Based Learning( CSP and RCOT 2023), we began planning the placement to provide learning opportunities across the four pillars of professional practice. Placement objectives included:
• Following the occupational therapy process to assess needs and give opportunities for meaningful activity.
• Facilitating learning and development for Abbeymoor staff in person-centred and meaningful occupations for people with ABI.
• Developing evidence-based reasoning to plan safe, effective and ethical interventions.
• Promoting the occupational therapy role and acting as a role model to others.
One strategy used during the planning stage was that an occupational therapy student on an existing traditional placement with the CABIS team spent one day a week within Abbeymoor. This student contributed to placement planning meetings by sharing a real-world perspective of what the placement would feel like for students and what the enablers and challenges could be. During this time, they also produced an induction pack for the students who would be allocated to the placement.
Development across four pillars of practice: the student perspective
At the start and end of the placement, both students gave consent to have audio-recorded discussions to capture their experiences. Evaluations can often rely on retrospective interviewing, but we felt it was important to hold these discussions in real-time.
Within these discussions, Chloe and Elicia were asked to reflect on their knowledge and skill development using the RCOT Career Development Framework( RCOT 2022) to recognise change that may occur during the placement.
They also shared reflections about expectations at the start of placement and enablers and challenges in relation to their learning. Finally, they shared their own recommendations for the future development of the placement.
Putting a numeric value on development can be difficult and is not proposed here as a sensitive measure of change( see table). However, using these ratings as a focus of discussion, this led to deeper reflections about personal and professional development.
In relation to evidence, research and development, at the start of the placement both students felt their own experiences were limited in this area and both made links to the fact that they had not completed their final year dissertation, or had any involvement in what they called‘ primary’ or‘ formal’ research.
But at the end of the placement, they both discussed their development as evidence-based practitioners, making links to carrying out an audit aligned with RCOT’ s Living well in care homes guidance( RCOT 2023) and discussing the need to look for evidence to support quality improvement ideas.
Similarly, and when discussing the leadership pillar, the discussions at the start of the placement perhaps tended to focus on what they had not experienced so far, with Chloe reflecting that she felt her score was relative to not seeing herself as showing leadership and autonomy and having close supervision and support on previous placements.
But by the end of placement both students reflected development in this pillar, discussing
Chloe( start) Chloe( end) Elicia( start) Elicia( end) Professional practice 5 5 4-5 5
Evidence, research and development
2 4 2 4
Leadership 3 4 3 4 Facilitation of learning 4 4 4-5 4
Table: Before and after evaluation of knowledge and skills – numbers indicate selfevaluation of career levels in the RCOT Career Development Framework
September 2025 OTnews 39