If you follow me on Twitter, you will know that I’m currently on my role-emerging virtual occupational therapy placement in which I need to do a lot of explaining about…
For my role-emerging placement we decided to take this to a whole new level and combine it with my blog- Not So Terrible Palsy and my role in the online community so therefore I’m on placement right now as I write this blog. How great is that? I’ve barely got my foot through the doorway but already I’m having the best time!
Due to it being flexible, I can tailor it towards my needs and work at my own pace- if I’ve had a bad night and didn’t sleep then I can have a few extra hours in bed and start working later on which works well with my fatigue levels.
So, what is a virtual occupational therapy placement?
The truth is, I don’t really know what a virtual occupational therapy placement is myself- I’m writing this blog as much for my sake as I am yours. But I can give you a bit of background about the nature of this part-time placement and tell you a bit about what I have planned over the course of the placement.
Background information:
To start this story off let me introduce you to my supervisor the lovely and creative Margaret Spencer– I was lucky to have a halfway visit from Margaret during my paediatric placement last year. I was more than lucky as during this visit Margaret asked me what area of OT and I wanted to go in and this is when I mentioned combining occupational therapy and blogging, which is where the idea of the placement came from. The online disabled community is growing. So, why isn’t occupational therapy growing with it? This is why I started producing OT content on my blog and why I published Why I Study Occupational Therapy– this blog was to lay the foundations for this placement and ever since then Margaret and I have been chipping away at it so much so that I did 15 hours’ worth of placement before it even started.
What my placement is going to look like:
It took Margaret and I a while to decide how we wanted this placement to look as even though being online is a big part of it, it’s not the only purpose of the placement.
During my last placement, I was very open about how emotionally challenging I found it in my blog Transitioning from a Service User to a Healthcare Professional. So, therefore another major element to my placement is this transition and I will be discussing this in my #OTalk on Twitter on the 24th of March in hope that I will find some top tips to enhance my confidence ready for my next traditional placement.
As well as my #OTalk I have a whole bunch of things lined up including talks at Sheffield Hallam and Derby University, a podcast and I will also be working closely with CP Teens UK as CP awareness month falls in the middle of placement, talk about perfect timing! In which I will be blogging about all these… Oh yeah, I haven’t mentioned… During my placement there will be a blog every week on my site! I mean it is a virtual placement, after all, we even have our own hashtag #VirtualOTPlacement.
A big aim for my placement is changing people’s attitudes about disability which is what my talks are going to be based on. For example, a big question I want to ask is… Do we used and address disability related terminology in the correct way? That’s why I dropped another post in- Establishing Effective Terminology to Minimise Barriers.
Why does a virtual occupational therapy placement work for me?
A virtual placement works for me because it’s a lot more flexible I can work whenever I want, I mean it’s nearly 10:00 at night as I’m writing this blog now!
Due to it being flexible, I can tailor it towards my needs and work at my own pace- if I’ve had a bad night and didn’t sleep then I can have a few extra hours in bed and start working later on which works well with my fatigue levels. Another advantage is that I can sit in the chair that’s made for me every day which works better with my posture.
Anyone can do this placement and this is why this placement means so much to me as I want to scope this out and lay the foundations so that future students can also do a virtual occupational therapy role-emerging placement as everyone has different ideas.
So, I hope you follow me on this placement and see what I get up to by using the hashtag #VirtualOTPlacement and checking out my WEEKLY blogs because none of this will work without your support! I hope my placement now makes more sense to those who were already aware of it!
Georgia @georgiavine4213 @GeorgiaVineOT