139 – WFOT Congress with WFOT President Samantha Shann

Today is a VERY special episode! Firstly I got the opportunity to talk with our WFOT President Samantha Shann. We explored her journey through the profession, How she got involved with WFOT, how she made it to the position of President and then we explore the upcoming WFOT Congress in Paris.

The upcoming congress in Paris is looking towards to being an amazing, unique celebration of diversity within the profession. If you want to go, and save yourself some $$$ get in and register before 23rd of June to get the early-bird registration price.

All of the congress information can be found here:https://wfotcongress2022.org

Secondly today is Occupied 4th birthday so what better way to celebrate than with an episode with the President! So celebrate all things OT with me, have a listen and share this ep with an OT friend.

Look after yourself, look after others, and always keep Occupied

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Automatic Transcript

Brock Cook 0:00G'day and welcome to a very very special episode of occupied this episode being proudly brought to you by the W fo ti Congress. Today we have the amazing pleasure of being able to bring to you your W fo ti President Samantha Shan to discuss her journey into the profession, her journey into being involved with the profession at literally the highest possible level as well as her go to tips, tricks, experiences, and things you need to know about the upcoming wfh e Congress in France. You guys are gonna love this. I absolutely love having a chat with Samantha. And an absolutely phenomenal story about coming into the profession of OT. So enjoy. G'day, my name is Brock cook and welcome to occupied. In this podcast we're aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy, we explore the people topics, theories and underpinnings that make this profession so incredible. If you're new here, you can find all of our previous episodes and resources at occupied podcast.com. But for now, let's roll the episode.

Samantha Shann 1:25I think I would probably agree with your theory there. And so while I was doing my A levels and live in the UK, and at that time in the late late 80s, they were really pushing women to go into science. So I was really exploring chemistry and had places at university to do chemistry had a little bit of an inkling about physiotherapy, but nothing really. And then at the same time, I was a young leader, Brownie Girl Guide pack. And there was a brownie that joined that had Down syndrome. And we had an occupational therapist come to one of our rowdy meetings to talk to us about how to help this brown me integrate how we might need to adapt some of the things that we did, but genuinely just to, you know, talk to us and, and show us how to enable her to be part of the brownie pack. And it was suddenly like this. Wow. And that was probably so it's certainly not the end of the journey. It was it got me thinking I applied and obviously got a place at university. But it wasn't an easy journey. So although occupational therapy found me, I will probably be very honest and sort of say, I struggled throughout my three years of my ot course. And not because I wasn't having a fantastic time, I made some wonderful friends that are friends now. And, and I enjoyed the course. And I was stretched by my lectures and made to think di...