Don’ t put too much pressure on yourself and make sure you look after your own wellbeing. Know it’ s okay not to know everything and focus on the core skills you are developing. It’ s a privilege … I feel lucky to have had this opportunity.”
Don’ t put too much pressure on yourself and make sure you look after your own wellbeing. Know it’ s okay not to know everything and focus on the core skills you are developing. It’ s a privilege … I feel lucky to have had this opportunity.”
how they had acted as a role model to others and advocated for the occupational therapy profession.
Co-producing service improvement ideas with residents, family members and staff by being embedded within the service was also linked to development of leadership skills.
Both students reflected on key developments in their professional practice, emphasising opportunities to utilise and enhance their core occupational therapy reasoning and skills such as observation, assessment, analysing activities and risk-enablement.
They also reflected on facilitating individual and group activities that were centred on occupation.
In relation to developing her understanding of the occupational therapy process, Elicia reflected that having to start it themselves and work all the way through it in an autonomous way not only improved her understanding, but will help her to translate this to new situations in future. They shared that by the end of placement, they had greater trust in their own reasoning.
Both students also reflected on the positive contribution they felt they had made to Abbeymoor residents and staff, with some examples including helping to increase the focus on meaningful occupation and identifying training needs of staff. They linked these examples to the facilitation of learning pillar.
Finally, both students felt that by the end of placement they could talk in more depth about their knowledge, skills and experiences, with Elicia highlighting that she felt she understood the pillars of practice better.
Key successes
Some of the key achievements mentioned by the students can also be viewed as some of the key successes for CABIS and for Abbeymoor. These included increased opportunities for residents to engage in meaningful occupation and an increased range of resources for staff to use within group and individual activities.
Louise Watson, Registered Manager at Abbeymoor Care Home, discussed that the students initiated impactful changes during their placement, such as developing orientation and communication boards and helping individuals to personalise their rooms, which has helped to develop person-centred care.
The students provided education to staff about how cognitive issues after ABI impact on people’ s ability to engage in daily activities and aspects of their daily routines.
For the students, they highlighted the experience of autonomous working as a benefit of the placement, reflecting that the experience had helped to prepare them for their first roles as qualified practitioners.
The less direct model of supervision encouraged autonomy and not having someone with them all of the time lessens the‘ big jump’ to being a registered occupational therapist.
Chloe also highlighted how being on placement with another student developed her ability to see things from multiple perspectives and, in her words, to see‘ it’ s not all about you on placement, which mirrors working in a multidisciplinary team in practice’.
Elicia added that the daily peer support from another student on this placement will help her to think about using different sources of support in future, not just from people in more senior roles.
Challenges and barriers
Reflecting on some of the challenges linked to student wellbeing on placement, we’ ve already noted that that people can experience limitations and decline in occupational engagement in care homes, and both students did share that they found this emotionally challenging.
This perhaps felt more difficult to work through at times without the day-to-day support of an occupational therapy educator.
Both students also contemplated other wellbeing challenges, such as putting a lot of pressure on themselves, or sometimes feeling thrown in at the deep end. By the end of placement, they recognised how some of these experiences had contributed to their resilience and development, but recognised that it can feel difficult at the time.
Chloe and Elicia also considered the limited structure during the early stages of their placement and linked this to not having direct supervision from an occupational therapist, limited understanding amongst staff about their role, and almost having too many ideas and not knowing where to start.
40 OTnews September 2025