Snowy days!

Placement - weeks 2 and 3!

Well i've certainly been experiencing and learning about the many aspects and diversity of being an OT in the community as well as the many challenges including very snowy, icy weather conditions! This meant we had to plan client visits well in advance and consider parking facilities regarding the road conditions! A lot of appointments had to be cancelled due to the weather being so severe so unfortunately I have not made it out with the physio's yet, but i'm hoping to this week.

Thinking like an OT

I feel positive this week as i'm beginning to really feel like i'm getting into the mindset of an OT and thinking about every aspect of a person and their engagement in occupation and being able to really relate the theory we've learned regarding this in our life sciences class! Theory really does make more sense in practice! An achievement for me last week was that I completed my first ever initial assessment with a patient (One of many yet to come I hope!) It felt really natural doing it too, just like a natural conversation. I feel it is really important to see a client within their home environment as it feels a lot more informal and you get a true reflection of that person and gain a better understanding of how they function within their home. Then it is easier to highlight problematic areas and as an OT we can implement compensatory strategies and equipment to enable their functioning as independently as possible, specific to their individual needs.

During the past couple of weeks I have been out with my educator on visits, as well as the OTA and the TAP. The therapy assistants are great and have an extensive range of experience! Yesterday I went on a speech and language therapy visit to a client with Parkinson's and it was really interesting to see the different strategies used in this area and how Parkinson's can ultimately affect speech and the impact this can have in engaging in occupations. For the client the most important activity to work on was speaking on the telephone, this was due to the fact she had been a receptionist all of her life and she was understandably, really feeling the frustrations of not being able to function with this task as she used to. Breathing techniques and strategies were put in place for her to practice and since this, she has made a successful phone call to book a hospital appointment and she is feeling a lot more positive. I have seen a lot of the positive side of OT over the last couple of weeks and saw the positive effects of how something as simple as being hoisted out of bed and sat into a chair after being bed bound for some weeks can have on a person's well-being and the well-being of their family - that particular visit had me very emotional, it was so powerful!

I have also been back on a follow up visit to the client i'm supporting with some visual structure strategies. I was able to do a kitchen assessment with the client under the watchful eye of my educator in the background! It was brilliant and I felt really natural doing it. Doing this assessment has highlighted the areas the client needs some support with and I will be working on some strategies that suit their specific needs. I'm really excited about this.

Halfway there!

I'm now halfway through my placement and had my halfway report and meeting with my educator and tutor yesterday and I'm pleased to say that it went really well! It's very apparent that my previous work experience has put me in very good stead for OT and being in a practice environment. During my remaining time here I want to try and get out with physio, complete my case study and visual structure strategies, and link my theory to practice through the use of my case study.

I'm still finding my room in student halls freezing cold! Thank goodness my mum bought me these socks. 

And thank goodness for hot water bottles! I don't know where i'd be without mine.

New Year - New Placement!

Happy New Year! 

A break over the Christmas holidays proved to be well needed! As I stopped everything, all the stress and tiredness seemed to catch up with me and I ended up feeling rather run down with a nasty virus over the holidays - pretty much all the way up until placement, but I was so glad of a break. It was nice to be able to spend some quality time with family and friends too.

"What? You commute to Carlisle!?"

Over the holidays I found when talking about my course to people I constantly get this reaction when I explain that I go to uni in Carlisle... I feel like I have to justify myself all of the time! But to be honest whilst I was resting over Christmas, I did reflect back and think... "how the heck do I manage getting up at 5am to travel to Carlisle and back twice a week!" That's determination for you.

Practice Placement 1.

I am now a week and one day into placement! It has flown by already. I'm really enjoying it so far and the team are really lovely and have made me very welcome. As it is a community placement I had an awareness of how they work and was familiar with their process of record and note keeping as my previous placement was in a community team.

I have been out on a few visits and have seen varied long-life conditions ranging from MND, MS and Rett Syndrome. I have also spent a day at a rehab unit which offers re-ablement therapy for patients for 6 weeks prior to leaving hospital, working on performing their ADL's as independently as possible providing support for their individual needs and making sure they are safe and well to return home. I have also purchased my first ever tape measure and have been to do a hip precautions assessment! I had a trip to the community loan store and have been learning about the huge variety of equipment available! Also about the different processes of ordering different pieces of equipment and the clinical reasoning behind it.

My educator has highlighted some of my strengths from previous work experience with visual aids to support a patient with MS - This is allowing me to come up with some strategies for them through activity analysis and standardised cognition assessment (MOCA) to highlight problem areas within their cognition and memory. Visual memory aids will then be put into place where necessary. I'm really excited about this and it's is great to be able to use my skills in OT intervention and feel like i'm progressing by doing something more independently. The aim is by the end of the placement for me to go out with support from one of the occupational therapy assistants and run an assessment on my own with this patient which would be a great opportunity!

I have been busy creating some basic visual structure examples relating to the patents specific needs.

I am hoping to utilise all of the resources and experiences possible to gain lots of experience from this placement. I am working hard with my educator through supervision highlighting how I can reach my learning outcomes for the level of this placement. I am hoping to go on some visits with the physio's during this week and pick their brains about anatomy! (excuse the pun).

My ID badge
(Excuse the awful photo)

Ive not only had to get used to a whole new placement, new people, and new places. Ive also been getting used to living in student halls! I am staying in Preston in short term student accommodation whilst here as It was too far to commute from home. Everything is new! The commute to placement from Preston is difficult to get used to as well. I cannot go out anywhere without my sat nav at the moment! I am glad to have my friend staying with me in the same flat who is on placement here too. It's always good to have someone here for some support! As results day is looming in the back of our minds and getting closer...

I'll leave you with a picture from my very cold student halls room... Notice Bertie the skeleton came along with me too!

My little desk area in my student halls room!

I will post more throughout my placement about my progress and experiences! Thanks for reading :)

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,

Plasticine, presentations and planning.

The environment and its affect on occupation.

This week we have explored how the environment can affect an individuals engagement and participation in occupations. This is a really interesting topic and I feel a very important core skill for an OT to consider all aspects of a persons environment as we look at people holistically. We looked at:

• Built environment
• Social environment
• Technological environment
• Financial environment
• Cultural Environment

We discovered that all of these environment contexts interlink and connect, and can all be affected by each other. My classroom group studied the technological environment in more depth and discussed the positives and negatives:

• Positives:

• Technology allows access to information
• Keeps people motivated to learn how to use technology
• Makes occupations accessible
• Engages people to develop new skills
• Promote Independence
• Connectivity
• Improve social skills
• Support disabilities – Communication apps for PECS etc
• Breaks down barriers
• Mobility - Mobility scooters 
• Assistive technology
• Equipment/machinery 
• Safety – Heat detectors, motion detectors

• Negatives:

• Difficult to keep up with
• Cognitive difficulties to keep up with how fast things change
• Hinders social skills - Children playing video games, not socialising with other children and not developing adequate social skills (Social environment)
• Isolating
• Virtual worlds - Avatars, internet dating, using social media.
• Education - people may not be cognitively able to learn new skills and how to operate new equipment.
• Accessibility
• Make vulnerable people more vulnerable – safe guarding
• Cost – budgets (Financial environment)
• Rural communities – No signal (Built environment)

Presentations and plasticine! 

This week we did a presentation based on a scenario given to our case study. Our scenario was that Joan Rivers at the height of her career had osteoarthritis in her hands. We studied this in depth using the compensatory frame of reference, critiquing it against other frames of reference. We discovered that you could use the biomechanical frame of reference primarily alongside the compensatory frame of reference as this focuses purely on movement and the body as a functioning machine. We explored; the condition Osteoarthritis, the OT process in this scenario and possible interventions, compensations and working on exercises with physio's in the wider multidisciplinary team. We related this directly to Joan Rivers and explored the occupations meaningful and personal to her through research, focusing on her self care, leisure and productivity.

To get the audience involved and experience what Joan may have been going through, I handed out writing practice sheets to which I asked them to write their name with their non-dominant hand. I asked how it felt and they answered things like "frustrating" and "weird!" 

I handed out some hand warmers because simple heat wraps and using hot water can be really effective to relieve arthritis symptoms.

I also handed out plasticine as manipulating plasticine is actually a really good activity to do to exercise your hands! It's fun too, you don't even feel like you're working! I think people enjoyed this task :)

Although I felt quite nervous I actually feel that doing all of these presentations is helping me to become more confident and I enjoyed involving the audience/group with an activity. 

This coming week we have another presentation and are designing our own occupational model of health. I also have a couple of deadlines coming up so it's time to start planning, reading and writing!

 I'll leave you with a picture

Over the next few weeks I will mostly be looking like this:

New found wisdom?

Theory into practice.

Aside from arty antics, this week has actually been quite a theory heavy week! The first of many I think! We have begun learning about frames of reference and relating these to practice. It has been really useful to have been out on placement and to have had the opportunity to see the theory in practice! I re-call hearing the expression "theory into practice" a lot and not really understood what it entirely entailed, but it is all starting to make sense now! The frames of reference I have looked at so far are:

• Biomechanical Frame Of Reference
• Client-centred Frame Of Reference
• Compensatory Frame Of Reference
• Cognitive Behavioural Frame Of Reference
• Psychodynamic Frame Of Reference

I still need to do a lot of reading on this topic to expand my understanding, but I have a very basic understanding of some of them, as I have seen them in practice. I have also very briefly looked at some conceptual models of practice.

I made this really simple little picture because I really liked the analogy my tutor Karen gave us explaining that the paradigm is the overarching belief (rainbow) The rain is all theory, the umbrella is the frame of reference, the handle is the model and the hand holding the umbrella is the approach. 

I was shocked to learn that there is actually a Sensory Integration frame of reference which I had no idea about which I would have been working alongside for 3 years at Wirral Autistic Society!

I have a 20 minute presentation to prepare with my learning set for Friday. It is using our occupational case study Joan Rivers and  a scenario in which we have to explore the Compensatory Frame of reference. 

This week I have discovered that it is far less tiring and stressful getting the train to commute to Carlisle, so I am now the proud owner of a student rail card! 

Being on the train at 6am can have its perks! And now with a 3rd off with my railcard!

Today I received my first copy of The British Journal of Occupational Therapy in the post! It felt quite special. It seems a really good resource full of relevant and current articles I can use in my studies.

And finally, if you're wondering about the title of this post? Then wonder no more! This week has seen the emerging of my first ever wisdom tooth! I'm really hoping it will bring me lots of wisdom and help me on my course! So far it's just brought me a bit of pain!

I will leave you with a photo of him! 

 I wonder if he'll help with my reading....

Using Art.

I have mentioned only very briefly in one of my previous posts that I am studying the amazing Joan Rivers as an occupational case study. This is for my life sciences module where we are studying the foundations of occupational therapy and occupational science and looking at development across the life span as well as many theories, models and frames of reference. For these sessions we work in learning sets, I am in learning set 2 :) To choose our occupational case study, there were 2 envelopes: one with the sex of the person and one with their occupation. My learning set chose a female entertainer! Wow! I still feel lucky to have picked that out. The criteria was that the person had to be over 70, who was alive or passed away within the last 5 years and had no on-going health condition. After a discussion my group decided we would use Joan Rivers. She has made our presentations and research so much fun! There is a a lot of rich material within her lifespan which we can use in our studies and assessments.

So as I've researched, read, watched and looked at Joan Rivers I have found myself becoming more and more inspired by her life and her occupations. She is an extremely interesting woman who has had a lot of ups and down's in her life. I found it particularly interesting looking at photographs of her when she first began her career in the 1950's-1960's comparing them to how she looked in the later years after supposedly hundreds of plastic surgery procedures! There are many times when Joan is interviewed and she revealed that she had never been happy with her appearance and her body. She claimed no man ever told her she was beautiful, and that when she looked in the mirror she would view herself as being fat.

I find her image and the reasoning behind it very powerful. I have created some images based on my inspiration of this topic.

Some really simple studies I have created:

I began by simply collaging some images of Joan. A bit of a 'then and now' if you like! Half of her face is before a lot of her procedures and the other half is the result of many procedures. I think these look really interesting and are quite a dramatic realisation of how much her image was changed through plastic surgery. To the naked eye, she never aged! Her huge personality never aged and neither did her willingness to work hard. Joan was 81 when she passed away earlier this year.

The next idea for me was to re-create these images of Joan's then and now portraits in a dramatic statement using the simple style of Pop Art. Why did I use Pop Art? Because in the 1950's Pop Art was a controversial art movement that emerged which challenged all the previous traditions of arts and traditional painting. It focused on imagery of popular culture and imagery that would publicly be easily recognisable through the news and media etc. At this time technology was advancing and TV became more accessible and manufacturing processes became more advanced. Screen printing was a huge method in Pop Art. It meant that many images of the same picture could be easily reproduced within a short time scale, getting away from the expressive brush stroke, and becoming more flat and manufactured with layers of block colour, rejecting traditional methods in a huge statement. I feel this mirrors Joan Rivers, as she too was emerging in the 1950's in her very controversial new career! The method represents Joan's appearance and how this was very commercialised by how she thought she should look from the media and other celebrities receiving plastic surgery. They all have that similar plastic look and have difficulty communicating through facial expressions. But I have not chosen to screen print my images, I have used a traditional brush and paint method. This is to represent that Joan was by no means manufactured, the was very much so unique and her personality shone beyond her appearance and she was a beautiful, one of a kind person.

This image looks at Joan's face before plastic surgery and the other half being the interior skull. This was to represent that we are all made the same on the inside, no matter how much you change your appearance, everybody goes through similar changes throughout their life span development. Also it represents that what is happening psychologically on the inside where nobody else can see can become physical and real through how someone changes their appearance. It could also represent the physical affect of many plastic procedures and how it could eventually take its toll on the body.

Finally just a simple quick sketch using charcoal. Charcoal is an expressive, bold material to use, Just like Joan Rivers.

These images were just some really simple ideas I had and felt inspired by. I felt I needed to bring the research I was learning alive visually. I love being inspired, it's fun!

Take it away Joan....