First term = done!

Aaaand stop.

Phew...

What a journey I have been on over the past 12 weeks! Although it has been stressful, writing my assignment has actually made me realise how much I have actually learned! My tutor re-iterated this when she told the class that the theory we are learning in the very first term of our course, wouldn't be taught to the BSc students until their second year - that brought it home to me and although I don't feel like it sometimes, I have learned so much over such a short period of time. But it's been intense, and I feel quite proud of myself and of my cohort!


Our group intervention last week went really well. It was titled 'Well-being wheels' and was aimed at our case study Joan Rivers at a time in her life where she was experiencing a lot of occupational deprivation, isolation, depression and suicide. Our intervention session aimed to promote positive thoughts and to support individuals to focus on the positives in their lives - what or who makes them happy and what activities are meaningful to them. Linking into occupational therapy this would fit well into the information gathering and goal setting part of the OT process and a person may feel more confident expressing their interests through an art making process in a more informal environment. - especially in a mental health setting and it would allow the a client-therapist relationship to develop, other than meeting the client for the first time and using a standard tick chart format where it would feel more clinical.

Our intervention was graded with two 'warm up' activities focusing on positive thoughts and interests, beginning the session with the whole group sat together in a circle, then splitting the group up into pairs and eventually into the individual wheel activity. The participants were offered the opportunity to share their wheels with the rest of the group at the end of the session.

Throughout the intervention each member of my learning set lead a different part and we all worked hard to promote a calm, relaxed atmosphere for people to have fun and be creative! The audience we're laughing and having relaxed conversations during the intervention and we offered verbal and visual support where needed. We received some really positive feedback from the participating group and this showed that we had met our session outcomes and we had made everyone feel relaxed and that they enjoyed the session!

I really did enjoy planning the session and felt confident running it for the other participating group. I feel that I enjoyed it so much and felt so confident because art is a personal interest of mine and I had previous experience of session planning, and structuring activities to meet individual interests and needs from my previous job. It was also down to the awesome guys and girls in my learning set for taking on board my experience and all participating and supporting each other in the planning stages. We really do have a laugh and that's what really gets you through some weeks when its pretty heavy going!

Doing this intervention has made me realise that I really am equipped with some good transferable skills for OT and how I could use my skills in intervention. It has also made me more confident and highlighted to me that I felt so confident because of good background knowledge and for future presentations hopefully we will have more time to prepare and with a good knowledge of what I am presenting on, I will feel more confident and I will hopefully be able to present without reading off notes (because that makes me really nervous) I prefer interacting more with the audience!

This was a visual example of my wheel which I divided into 3 sections that represented 3 things that contribute towards my well-being... Family, friends and my cats :)

This was a great end to the term :)

The only thing left to do now is my assignment... and low and behold, at this stage it is actually finished! Uploaded onto Pebblepad and ready to rock and roll! I still feel quite worried about it to be honest, I feel it's not up to a level 7 standard. However, I have tried my best to be critical and I have worked hard on it over the past few weeks. I guess it's just hard as it's my first assignment and I have no guidance on my current level of writing as nothing has actually been marked yet! So its the unknown... and that scares me a little!

But it is now time to put this to the back of my mind for a little while as Christmas starts here... I best start my Christmas shopping! It is hard to put OT to the back of your mind though. Focusing on people as occupational beings and taking into account the environment and all of the many different attributes that constitute to peoples health makes it impossible not to be thinking like an OT all of the time in any occupation you engage in! It's a way of life.

Merry Christmas - see you in 2015!!

So this is what being a masters student feels like!

The dreaded word.... Pebblepad!

I am posting a little late as I have been extremely pre-occupied and a little under pressure with a fast approaching deadline for my first ever marked level 7 assignment! Eeekk!

The assignment is a 4000 word online Pebblepad portfolio based on my case study Joan Rivers... 4000 words and split into 4 sections... doesn't sound too bad right? .....WRONG! I am quickly discovering the challenges of masters level writing and I found I initially discovered this whilst managing to write 2000 just in ONE of the sections! Far too much waffling! There is so much I could write in each section because Joan's life was so interesting and issues ranging from health and well-being, to Joan Rivers' many occupations, physical development and psychosocial developments etc etc. I'm quickly discovering that "being masterful" is being able to pick out the key relevant information; questioning and critiquing (NOT DESCRIBING) it appropriately and to the point. This is very much easier said than done! We have also had a very theory heavy few weeks learning about frames of reference and models of practice, lots of reading and lots of presentations, lots of independent learning, lots of planning and lots of writing... I feel like everything has just kind of gone "boom!" and I have very quickly realised... Wow, so this is what a masters student feels like!

Occupational Model of Health

Last week my learning set presented our Occupational Model of Health and here it is :)

It is focused on health, well-being and everything that constitutes "healthy" participation within occupation. I like it because it is colourful, and as an OT I would like to enable people to have colourful lives :)

Last week we also had a guest speaker who is a graduate OT from the university involved in research regarding the Model of Human Occupation. She ran a class about MOHO and it was so interesting to see how it can be used in practice - it helped me to understand it all. She could relate to us as students as she'd been sat there only a couple of years ago herself and we could relate to her. It was inspiring to think... in a few years, that could be me! It seems a million miles away at the moment but in two years time I will have just graduated as a qualified Occupational Therapist! 

Placement update!

I found out my next placement for PP1 in January! This time it is a 5 week placement where I will be based with another Community OT team! If I'm honest I was a little disappointed initially as I will need to move there for 5 weeks and I have only ever experienced OT in the community so far and would have liked to have got a hospital placement a little more out of my comfort zone. However, I feel I will gain a lot of really good experience to build on my current experience of community OT. 

This week.

Aside from writing, I have been working with my learning set to plan a group intervention session which some of our class will participate in next week. The intervention is to relate to case study Joan Rivers and has to be something she would be interested in at a specific time in her life where she may have needed OT treatment. We have utilised the skills of the people in the group and I have really enjoyed being able to use my skills from being an activity leader in art and being able now to apply my knowledge of OT into it to plan an creative art intervention for the group. Stay tuned for more details and how the intervention goes next week! I'm actually looking forward to it! In preparation, the tutors this week held different intervention sessions for the students to participate in which included: Creative writing, art and drama. I really enjoyed it! And gave us some great ideas and provided us with some "tools in our OT tool box" to use in the future. - Not just that, it was a distraction from pebblepad!

I actually feel quite positive this week regardless of feeling very worried about my assignment. I'm really truly thankful for the other students on the course and in my learning set. Everyone is so supportive of each-other at times of stress, we're all in the same boat and I'm looking forward to the next 2 years of this roller-coaster ride, all in this journey together, Members of my learning set always make me smile and I can honestly say, I laughed until my belly hurt in our learning set meeting this week - you guys are great to be around! So, yep. I'm feeling quite lucky. I'm lucky for this opportunity, (to be that stressed my hair falls out) lucky that I'm around lots of awesome people and lucky to be learning an awesome profession :) 

I'm off to bed with a cup of tea and to watch this for homework purposes....

Joan, you really make a stressful assignment much more interesting and fun. 

Goodnight,