Private Care Sector Workforce Initiative
Would you like an Occupational Therapy Student on Placement?
DEVELOPING ALLIED HEALTH PROFESSIONAL (AHP) PRACTICE PLACEMENT OPPORTUNITIES IN CARE HOMES FOR OLDER PEOPLE
An initial scoping meeting took place with representatives from the HEIs, NES and Scottish Care in February this year which identified potential areas for development with opportunity to support the care homes in terms of training and building capacity as well as providing the student with an excellent learning experience. It was felt that a good place to start would be with Occupational Therapy (OT) students however the hope is that this can broaden out in time to include other AHPs and also look at multidisciplinary teams of 2 or 3 to support a service in a particular way eg falls prevention and management.
Further to the initial scoping meeting a follow up event took place in Glasgow Caledonian University to which care homes and care at home services were invited to find out about the OT course and placement options. From that meeting 20 practice placement offers have been confirmed from a variety of services.
It has was agreed to progress developing OT practice placement opportunities in a similar way for Robert Gordon University. A successful event was held on Friday 18th June 2010 in the conference centre in RGU, where providers across a range of sectors attended.
The event was informal but informative and interactive with the hope that services will be keen to make practice placement offers as a result of the information they received. Further information can be obtained on placements by contacting Dawn Mitchell on .
This is an excellent opportunity for services to be supported in a variety of ways through the students and to work together to provide excellent quality of care for residents and service users.
You can also contact Mike Kiely at or ring him on 07595 768901 for more information.
Below is the information that was generated from the event held at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) on 22nd March. If you could not attend the event but would like more information speak with David Rennie at or on 07946 607532.
Some information is available from GCU if you would like to talk further to them about the possible placement of a student:
1. Summary of when students are on placement along with assessment methods, etc. click here for the document
2. Placement offer from (with GCU contact details) click here for the document
3. H&S form click here for the document
See below for frequently asked questions about occupational therapy practice placements.
Q. What is Occupational Therapy?
A. Occupational therapy is a profession concerned with promoting health and well being through occupation. The primary goal of occupational therapy is to enable people to participate in the activities of everyday life. Occupational therapists achieve this outcome by enabling people to do things that will enhance their ability to participate or by modifying the environment to better support participation. (World Federation of Occupational Therapists 2004)
Q. What knowledge and skills do the students bring to the placement?
A. Role emerging placements take place during levels (years) 3 and 4 of the BSc (Hons) programme and in Year 1 of the MSc programme. Therefore the knowledge and skills they have will vary. Both programmes examine human occupation, activity and participation in addition to inter-professional modules addressing such issues as governance and health promotion.
Q. What is a role emerging placement?
A. A role emerging placement is where students are placed in a work setting where there is no established occupational therapy service (e.g. care home, care at home/housing support service). Students are expected to familiarise themselves with the organisation, team members, the service users and policies and procedures. Opportunity should be available for them to assess, plan, implement and evaluate interventions in order to suggest areas where occupational therapy may enhance existing service provision.
Q. What would my organisation have to provide for a role emerging placement?
A. Students would normally attend placement in pairs. Your organisation would be expected to provide an on-site supervisor, induction training and to contribute to the assessment of students.
Q. Will students arrive with enhanced Disclosure Scotland check/Hepatitis B immunisation/………..?
A. Practical matters, specific to the placement, such as these can be resolved in setting up the placement. All students complete an enhanced Disclosure Scotland check (or equivalent for overseas students) on admission to the programme. Other practical preparation for placement includes Therapeutic Management of Violence and Aggression, Moving and Handling, Basic Life Support and revision of Code of Ethics and Data Protection.
Q. What does on-site supervision mean?
A. The on-site supervisor provides day-to-day support and direction, information about the service user group and service, guidance and feedback.
Q. What support does the University offer the student during placement?
A. For level 3, the students will be allocated an academic tutor. Support is provided in a variety of ways, ranging from telephone calls, emails, electronic discussion forums to occasional on-site visits. Tutorials will form part of the day spent in university.
Q. What support does the University provide to my organisation?
A. Various benefits have been reported (taken from role emerging placement providers):
“ It benefits the organisation to get external perspectives, and improves support it can offer to service users.”
“ It generates new ideas within our service – staff and service users benefit greatly”
“ We can often learn from them as well as students learning from us.”
Q. How long does the placement last?
A. Placement duration varies from 5 weeks to 12 weeks dependent on the programme and stage of training. Placement may be full time or part time, again varying with the programme and stage of training. Level 3 consists of 4.5 days in week 1, and 3 days for the remaining 4 weeks.
