A joint project between myself and my good friend Zara Mills for the ACMHN International Mental Health Conference recently held in Perth, Australia.

Earlier in the year I organised for Professor Matthew Molineux to do an in-service for the Townsville District MH OT’s via Video conference on Occupation Based Practice. Quite a number of OT’s here were taken with the messages he was delivering and at the end he mentioned that he would be more then happy to come up to Townsville if the district could bring him up.

So we set about trying to organise to get him up here. One of the OT’s working in the main part of the hospital (Kym Murphy) put together a funding application to the Private Practice Fund that was approved and flights & accom etc was organised.

I’ve seen Matthew do short 1hr talks on Occupation and its place in OT a few times and have read a few of his papers (Molineux, M. (2011). Standing firm on shifting sands. New Zealand Journal of Occupational Therapy, 58(1), 21-28. is one of favorite papers ever) So I felt that I had a rough idea of the importance and the the emphasis Matthew puts on OT’s using Occupation in practice and not just as a result of practice. At the beginning of the day I was more excited about seeing other OT’s in my district and how they would react to the messages they were about to get. To see if any of them would have the ‘lightbulb’ moment that I had nearly a year earlier after reading the previously mentioned paper.

Another thing that I was actually really excited about was that this was the first PD I had been to in this district, or any district for that matter where it was all OTs but had OTs working in both mental health and physical areas of practice. That really never happens and I was super keen to see how it would affect the group dynamics.

The workshop began with reflective exercise’s and then a laying of the groundwork around the history and development of Occupational Therapy and then into how OTs look at Occupation. Matthew introduced The Nature of Occupation (Molineux, 2010) which is something I spoke about in a previous blog post (Student Occupation Based Practice Workshop). It was really encouraging for me to see how the other OTs in the room took this method of thinking about occupation on board. Now I’m not saying that all in attendance instantly got the concept but even the tiniest advancement is a win in my books!

The workshop then moved on to how Occupation should fit within Occupational Therapy. It cemented home a few truths to me, especially about OTs who get so caught up in ‘function’ they loose the true power of occupational therapy which is ‘Occupation.’ I was presented with some very practical ideas that I am going to use in my thinking and my clinical application.

One was “Occupational Diagnosis” (Rodgers, 2004) which I intend you use in my clinical documentation and MDTR. This tool will allow me to 1) allow me to expose the rest of my clinical comrades to Occupational language in a non-threatening, non-invasive way that they are more likely to take note of. Its a simple, easy to remember, and logical method of describing a person’s occupational situation in any written or oral handover.

Another was a flowchart (seen below) from Hocking’s 2001 paper on Occupation Based Assessment. This clearly shows that although ‘function’ may be important in some circumstances, it is most definitely no the main or initial focus of Occupational Therapists. This is a pet hate for me and one that really frustrates me when OTs only focus on ‘function’ because it’s “what an OT does” or because “its the same as occupation anyway.”

At the end of the workshop the group was to make plans for “where to from here?” There was a definite mood change in that instant where it became very apparent that many people had been accepting of all the information presented (fully understood or otherwise) but didn’t seem confidence enough to commit to change. I put forward a regular meeting open to all the OTs in the district where issues around OBP, success’ and failures, literature and ideas could all be brought and discussed.

I am really hoping that this group will be able to continue the momentum in changing the districts current practice to be more Occupation Based. I’m hoping that through this group we can continue the exposure our OTs get to OBP literature and practice examples. That, Occupation Based Practice and clinical reform to gain back our professional identity will snowball in this district. This isn’t going to be easy, I’m under no illusion of that.

Some of our OTs definitely seemed to struggle with the concept of practicing with “Occupation as a Means and Occupation as an Ends” (Gray, 1998). It did seem that this was mostly due to work structure, expectations and policy constraints. I agree that, yes, there are issues and barriers, but giving in to these barriers and letting them shape us as a profession is how we got to where we are now. We are slowly (some say rapidly) moving further and further away from “Occupation as a means” as we let the medical model and policy makers shape our practice without any resistance or assertive guidance from ourselves as a profession and as an individual.

In the end it starts and ends with us. I’ve made the commitment to myself and to my profession to be as true to the OT core beliefs as I can and will do whatever is in my power in order to do so. I’m hoping that using this workshop as a catalyst I am able to convince others to do the same, who will in turn convince others, and so on and so on until…

…..OTs take over the world….

In August Aidan Parsons and myself contributed to a 2 day MH module at our local university by presenting a 3hr Occupation Based Practice Workshop to the 4 year OT students.

Although the group was very quiet to start with it was fantastic to see the change in thinking that occurred during this 3hr time period. At the beginning of the workshop we brainstormed with the group words that they believed defined Occupational Therapy. The usual suspects were all accounted for but it took a long time before any mentioned Occupation.

We ran the workshop starting with laying the groundwork of knowledge about what the literature has to say about what is occupation, how this is used by OT’s etc. We then moved into a reflective activity around their own experiences on placement, times when they used occ based practice, times when they didn’t, how they could change the times that they didn’t to be more occupation based.

The examples that the student came up with were fantastic and I could see them really grasping the concept of Occupation Based Practice through their examples. The one thing that I think helped them the most was “the Nature of Occupation” (Molineux, 2010). Using this framework for looking at occupation really seemed to help the students grasp onto the complexity of occupation and be able to recognise the differences in how different occupations may fit with different people.

We also did an activity where we asked for a volunteer and, as a group, interviewed them with an occupation focus and really trying to use our occupational language. Before we started, Aidan and I, had no idea how this was going to work as we’d never tried it before. We were both pleasantly surprised at how well this played out. The group was able to interview this volunteer and find out about all the things she likes, wants and needs to do in her life. They looked at her occupational balance and any barriers to her engagement in some occupations. At the end of this I highlighted a few things. I made the point (by asking her) that at no time had the volunteer felt uncomfortable, been put on the spot, disclosed anything she didn’t want to etc. The group agreed that they had more then enough information to find a starting point for their occupation based practice. I made a big point of highlighting that at no point had we ever discussed the person’s diagnosis, illness or disability, as I am a firm believer (and I know that some will disagree) that good occupation focused OT’s can do their job without knowing what a persons “diagnosis/label” is. I believe that this is because we work with the person and their occupational needs and not what a clinical category says their deficits are.

Overall I feel that the workshop went very well and that the students seemed to get a lot out of it that I hope they can carry over to their clinical practice.

Here is the poster that myself, Merrolee Penman, Anita Hamilton, Leonora Coolhaas, Trina Phuah & Allison Sullivan developed for OTA2013.

So from July 24-26th I was fortunate enough to attend my very first Occupational Therapy National Conference in Adelaide. Not only was I attending this conference but I was also honoured to be asked at last years QLD State conference if I would join the Senior Management Team as the conference Social Media Coordinator. I’m told this was due to the work I had done with MH4OT but I know that it came mainly from a lovely recommendation of Anita Hamilton.

On top of all of this I also had a short oral presentation with Robert Pereira & Matthew Molineux and a large group poster project with Merrolee Penman, Anita Hamilton, Leonora Coolhaas, Trina Phuah & Allison Sullivan. I’ve learned a multitude of things from all of these various projects that all culminated at OTA2013….then add on top of that the things I learned at the conference!

The SMT
So I joined the SMT for OTA2013 in about October 2012. We would meet via teleconference monthly and discuss everything to do with putting together the conference. This was an absolutely eye opening experience for myself, who had never been involved in anything like this, let along to this scale. Even though I didn’t have a lot to do with the budget side of things it was fascinating to me how much it actually costs to put on an event of this magnitude.

My role within the SMT was to use social media to promote OTA2013 and to also provide and encourage a social media presence during the conference. Secondary to this the tact that I took in organizing the OTAust Facebook, twitter and instagram accounts was aimed at raising the overall social media presence of the association and therefor the number of OT’s that they are able to connect with using these tools. To start with I don’t think I was 100% certain what exactly I was doing or how I was meant to run the social media of an association that represents 1000′s of OT’s around the country and the profession as a whole on the international stage. There wasn’t a lot of guidance around this as to date the association hadn’t had anyone who knew how to use these tools well.

So I did what anyone does when crossing unknown ground….i tiptoed. I tried different things, different posts, using images, asking questions, all the while keeping an eye on the view and engagement stats. Eventually, almost naturally evolving, I found my groove. I have a good idea of the sort of posts that are going to have the biggest impact with the OTAust followers.

This experience has opened doors to many many new opportunities, both nationally and within my state, which I won’t go into right now but I’m extremely excited about what the future holds.

The Presentations
For OTA2013 I had two different abstracts accepted with 2 different groups of people. Both of these groups connected virtually, and both operated very differently.

The first was “Social Media in the contemporary CPD climate: why it is easier than you think to take advantage of these valuable learning opportunities” and was accepted as a poster. I was nominated as the lead author/coordinator for this project.

We were all heavily involved in social media on different platforms and using it as a CPD tool. With the introduction of National Registration last year OT’s in Australia now have a structured CPD requirement that must be recorded and can be audited for the purpose of continued registration to practice. We wanted to show conference delegates how they could tap into this relatively new resource, quickly & easily and how they could utilise them for their own CPD points.

We had the idea right off the bat to do something that was a little different to any posters any of us had ever seen before and that was to use QR codes to link to external content that delegates could look at and take home on their mobiles/tablets all while standing in front of our poster.

I think the beauty of this project was that the tools that we were demonstrated were the exact tools we used to actually work together to piece it all together from our various locations around Australia and across the world. We showed how Evernote could be used to record a CPD record. How Facebook, Twitter, TED, and Linkedin all contain valuable content that can be utilised for CPD. How WordPress could be used to not only keep a log of your CPD if you wanted to but also provide a place where you could record your reflections on the different CPD opportunities previously mentioned, and then link those blog posts into your CPD record (Evernote). And we also demonstrated how Learnist can be used as a tool for Digital Curation of all of the above resources into one place.

The second was “Occupation-focused practice: From enigma to action” which was accepted as a short oral presentation.

There were three of us who were involved in this presentation. We had met over social media quite a while beforehand and had talked often and discussed the state of OT and occupation, so when the call for papers was sent out we decided to put something together.

This project was much easier and quicker to put together then the Poster but equally as enjoyable. This was partly because the short oral was only 5min long with a couple minutes for questions and partly due to the fact that there were less of us involved then there was with the poster.

The paper was fantastic as it fit right into the personal reading and learning I was doing at the time. Looking at the devolution of the OT role into a “gap filler role” and how I might be able to changed that in my own clinical practice. On top of that having more discussions with two of the OT’s i respect the most in the world was a fantastic experience. The work we did also helped me to gain a much greater understanding of the history and development of Occupational Therapy and how we have moved through different paradigms.

Unfortunately Matthew wasn’t able to make it to Adelaide for the conference so Robert and I presented on behalf of the group. We presented in a fairly informal manor and got some good questions and feedback afterwards.

The Conference
So the conference as a whole exceeded everything I was expecting it to be. I had been talking about it for months with the SMT and thought I knew every little detail but the atmosphere of being around 750 other keen, motivated, enthusiastic OT’s just cant be matched!

I met some amazing OT’s who I’ve read about, heard about, talked to online, seen their work in journals and quoted in my own work. I do love to network so OTA2013 felt like a goldmine for the senses. With my Social Media duties during the conference i felt like i was on my feel, flat out from sun-up to sundown, but i wouldn’t trade it for the world.

After the first day i did find myself in a state of sensory overload. So for the next couple days I did make sure i made the time to take time out from the noise and hustle and do some of my social media work in a quieter area of the conference, e.g. in the exhibition hall while everyone was out watching the sessions. This allowed me to not only get done what i needed to do more efficiently but also to regulate any overload I might feel. As it was the day after the conference i spent mostly in bed absolutely exhausted so can only imagine how I’d be if i hadn’t taken some time out during the days.

Overall the OTA National Conference was an amazing experience to be part of and one that I hope I can be part of for years and years to come.