Occupied

December 2018 I was given the opportunity to co-present a webinar for the new WFOTvx series of professional development things. Myself, Karen Jacobs of Lifestyle by Design and Stephanie Lancaster of On The Air presented a Podcasting 101 webinar for Occupational Therapists.

We covered everything from the workflow involved in creating and publishing a podcast as well as how OT’s can utilise this media space for their own professional development.

A massive thanks to WFOT for supporting this presentation and to Karen Jacobs for facilitating and inviting me to be part of it.

The recording of the webinar can be found here:

Keep occupied

Brock
[email protected]
@brockcookOT

Erika is an OT and entrepreneur who together with her husband, Mike, run their business Joy Energy Time. Their focus on burnout in health professionals is a contemporary issue that needs to be addressed now before it becomes an epidemic.

How I found Erika

I first came across Joy Energy Time on Instagram and, being the visual person I am, was instantly attracted by their awesome pineapple logo. I found the podcast and was an almost instant fan! I’m generally quite picky with the podcasts but i instantly got this sense that the content Erika and Mike were putting out was real and honest. I tuned into an amazing Instagram Live story where Erika explored a revelation she had recently had about her long term anxiety and burnout. She then turned that into a podcast which I have shared for you below.

It takes a special something to be able to put yourself out to the world like that. It takes something even more special to take these experiences and turn them into an opportunity. This is exactly what Erika and Mike have done with Joy Energy Time. They aim to educate and support therapists around burnout and self-care practices.

The Burnout Conversation

We started chatting about the concept of “travel therapy” and the differences regarding this between the USA and Australia. We discuss our common burnout experiences and the contributing factors. We then unpacked some of the common impacting factors of burnout and highlighted some of the tools we’ve found that can help manage these factors. Of course, as you would expect from Occupied, we also related it all to Occupational Therapy and Occupational Science.

Joy Energy Time offers an online course (Bash the Burnout for Healthcare Professionals) for clinicians. The aim of the courser is educating HPs about burnout and how to manage it. Information and enrollment in the course can be found at: www.joyenergytime.com

Brock
[email protected]
@brockcookOT

Alondra Ammon is an Occupational Therapist from California. She graduated with her masters in Occupational Therapy from Samuel Merritt University and is currently working as a school-based OT. Her passion is Diversity and the promotion of the profession!

I first came across Alondra’s youtube channel and being a bit of a geek had a search around for the rest of her social media presence. After that, we engaged in some conversations over Twitter where I found that she had been on On The Air. The diversity of her professional experience, her bright and bubbly personality and her interest in promoting diversity throughout Occupational Therapy all added up to her being someone I just had to chat with. I have always found people with a broad and varied life experience have the most interesting perspectives on things and Alondra’s military and previous health service experience intrigued me.

At the beginning of the episode, we discussed Occupied Ep 020 which wasn’t released at the time of recording. Alondra Added her ideas around the changing diversity of the profession and the impact it might have on Occupational Therapy as a whole.

Occupational Passion:

Throughout the chat I hope it’s evident that She has more passion for Occupational Therapy than your average OT. As a result, she is harnessing some of this explosive enthusiasm and channeling it into a media that she is hoping will have a positive impact on the profession.

She has some important messages for all OT’s about promoting the profession and taking, the often scary, step to put yourself out there for the benefit of spreading the word among the general public.

Check out Alondra’s Youtube channel where she discusses contemporary issues and interviews a variety of Occupational Therapists. I challenge you to watch and not crack a smile after soaking in her unbridled enthusiasm!

Alondra La OT Facebook

Keep occupied

Brock
[email protected]
@brockcookOT

Today’s discussion stemmed from a number of observations of late. Seemed like too much of a coincidence that the topic came up multiple times in a very short space of time so I decided to put together my thoughts. I’m very aware that for some people this topic is quite sensitive. I do encourage you to have a listen with an open mind as I am simply trying to highlight an idea that I haven’t seen spoken about in the literature. That idea is that changing the demographics of Occupational Therapy will change the profession fundamentally. I definitely don’t have a definitive answer to any of these raised concerns but the (well rounded) discussion needs to happen.

I compare some of the reported experiences from the literature to my personal experience. My belief is that the experiences are legitimate but my interpretation of the cause of these experiences seems to differ greatly from those presented in the articles that I have read. I’ve seen a lot of very heated discussion on the topic of sex disparity.

My concern is that the views being taken into these discussions are not conducive to effective discussion. When the chat gets heated, this is stilting the ability for clinicians to have a well-rounded view. Another question I wanted to pose is if this is an issue from the perspective of men as my personal experience has never highlighted it as an issue but also I’ve not read any papers on the topic that have included men as authors….. so if you know of some shoot them through to me because I’d love to read.

Beagan, B., & Fredricks, E. (2018). What about the men? Gender parity in occupational therapy. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 85(2) 137-145. doi: 10.1177/0008417417728524

Keep occupied

Brock

Dr. Ellen Nicholson is the Head of Department at the Aukland University of Technology’s, Department of Occupational Science and Therapy and has had a vast and profound influence on my own career being the inspiration for Operation Occupation. We talked about everything from her journey into OT, the professions move back towards Occupation, and the role of Occupational Language in that journey.

I first came across Ellen’s work in ~2012 when she presented at the OT24VX on her PHD research. This really hit me at a time in my career when I was having a professional identity crisis. I was struggling to even work out if i was working as an Occupational Therapist. Ellen was super friendly and easy to connect with. She normalised a lot of the feelings and experiences that I was having at the time and acted as a super intelligent, amazing soundboard.

Using her references, ideas and inspiration i not only changed my own practice but also started a couple projects that aimed to support other clinicians to do the same for themselves.

Check out her work here:

There is evidence of a growing tension within the occupational therapy profession regarding the legitimate knowledge and practice of occupational therapists. While occupation is described by many as the legitimate knowledge base for occupational therapy practice, the history of the profession, and the practice context, often appear to endorse accepted practices that are not overtly aligned with an occupational paradigm. Oppressive, dissatisfying and disempowering social conditions, revealed in the knowledge, power, and discourse which underpin occupational therapy practice, have likely further influenced the meaning and intention of occupational therapy practice with children and families over time.This thesis describes a critical participatory action research project which sought to investigate and affect how occupational therapists working with children translated knowledge to inform and transform their practice. Embedded in shared concerns about the legitimacy of accepted practices with children and families, and using a contemporary occupational therapy theory as a framework, eight occupational therapy co-researchers engaged in two phases of critical action; deconstruction-planning and action-reconstruction. Positioned in between the phases, the resolution of a subjective quest for validation was revealed as a principal catalyst to transformative action. Practice stories and critical dialogue, gathered as project information, was reflectively analysed to progress both the dialogical inquiry and the transformative intent of the research.Implications for practice drawn from the research findings include a suite of action-oriented strategies which will enable practitioners to discover and advance practice transformation within their own practice. These strategies have been consolidated into the VENIA model, which is presented as a practical solution to changing the practice of occupational therapists, and strengthening the political agenda of the occupational therapy profession.

and you can access her full thesis right here:

http://aut.researchgateway.ac.nz/handle/10292/6075

Keep occupied

Brock

We’ve looked at values and how they may highlight a person’s occupational needs so the next logical progression is to have a look about what happens when someone changes the occupation that fills a need. That gap between occupations is a time that I feel OT’s can really have an incredible impact on peoples lives. Let’s explore the different types of transitions and how this can impact on the interventions and OT could perform.

Keep occupied

Brock

We continue our chat about Sarah’s experiences overseas, what developed country OT’s could learn from these limited resource experiences, professional understanding of culture and OT’s use of diagnosis.

Sarah Putt is pediatric OT and fellow podcaster! She currently runs her own practice but has practiced in more countries than I was able to count and has some amazing stories to go with it! As expected we discuss the amazing medium of podcasting and how OT’s can benefit and engage in it and she also introduces me to Hippotherapy and the occupation based benefits for service users of this very unique practice modality.

You can find the OT4LYFE podcast anywhere you can find Occupied

Also check out the FB page:

or Insta:

or contact Sarah Via Twitter:

Brock

Sarah Putt is pediatric OT and fellow podcaster! She currently runs her own practice but has practiced in more countries than I was able to count and has some amazing stories to go with it! As expected we discuss the amazing medium of podcasting and how OT’s can benefit and engage in it and she also introduces me to Hippotherapy and the occupation based benefits for service users of this very unique practice modality.

You can find the OT4LYFE podcast anywhere you can find Occupied

Also check out the FB page:

or Insta:

or contact Sarah Via Twitter:

Brock

As requested! an expansion of Episode 009 – How Do Values Fit with OT Practice by having a chat about how I’ve used these concepts in practice. Looking at a very practical way of finding a person’s occupational needs which can then be used to guide the occupation based practice direction.

Super keen to start the discussion an hear if other clinicians have used any values-based perspectives in Occupational Therapy

Keep occupied

Brock
[email protected]
@brockcookOT