Our first education summit
We recently held our first education summit, focusing on the pre-registration education and early careers of our future workforce in a changing world. It was a great opportunity for over 50 educators, learners and practitioners to come together and discuss the topics that matter to them.
What did we discuss?
Karin Orman, Director of Practice and Innovation, shared insights from the workforce summits and recent survey report1.
Carolyn Hay, Head of Education, gave an overview of the current learner population and the role of our Learning and development standards for pre-registration education2 (2019).
Carolyn also encouraged thinking differently about how we use the standards, broadening how they’re applied in practice and the early careers of occupational therapists. We then broke into small groups and took time to consider pre-registration education and what we could start, stop and continue to do.
What actions were proposed?
There were some great ideas and lots of common thinking across the groups. Actionable ideas presented by individuals and RCOT included:
- Improving transition support from learner to newly registered occupational therapist.
- Ensuring that learners feel listened to and have the confidence to identify their personal needs and use their developing skills.
- Building on this transition support to ensure development opportunities and pathways across the career are not missed.
- Enhance and grow collaboration between employers and university teams – potentially building in regional level involvement.
- Explore growing the academic workforce – introducing a wider range of rotations to give early career experience.
- Challenging traditional approaches to placements, including the idea that learners need a specific placement mix; use of a one-to-one supervision model; being overly protective in what we expose learners to – how they can be prepared for the realities of practice if they haven’t been a part of it in their pre-registration education and the drive for a single assessment document.
What have we learnt?
The learnings gained from the summit have been valuable in supporting and guiding our ongoing development of the Workforce Strategy and the upcoming five year review of our Learning and Development Standards. As we begin our business planning for the next year, our next steps are to prioritise the ideas from the summit and develop a plan.
It was a great privilege to be able to spend dedicated time with such a range of people all bringing their expertise, experience, and enthusiasm to the summit – with the common goal of providing high quality pre-registration education, preparing our learners to be advocates for the profession and embracing the power of occupational therapy to transform lives. A huge thank you for everyone that took part!
Join us at RCOT Annual Conference
If you would like to challenge how you use the standards in practice you can join our session, The jigsaw of practice placement allocation at this year's online RCOT Annual Conference. This discussion will be led by Carolyn Hay with esteemed panel members. At the conference you’ll also hear from our occupational therapy colleagues and professional supporters on a variety of other interesting topics. Join us at this year’s online RCOT Annual Conference on Wednesday 14 and Thursday 15 June 2023. You can review the schedule and book your ticket with us via our RCOT Annual Conference page!
1 https://www.rcot.co.uk/practice-resources/workforce-survey-report-2023