At RCOT, our vision is that people everywhere value the life changing power of occupational therapy. That’s why for OT Week 2022 we launched our ‘Lift up your everyday with OT Life Hacks’ campaign. As part of the campaign occupational therapists are encouraged to share life hacks to help people overcome challenges to do things they love and need to do.
We’ve seen OTs share life hacks for home, school, work or play. As the Professional Development Manager at RCOT, the life hack I shared is aimed at occupational therapists.
‘I understand how challenging it can be to find time to reflect on learning from CPD activities and how we apply that learning to our practice. Using the voice dictation or memos function on your mobile is a great way to capture your reflections on the go. You can keep track of your thoughts as they develop over time and go back and summarise them across a timeline in the future. Reflection on something that happened some time ago is unlikely to capture the real essence of what you were thinking or feeling, so grab that voice recorder and quickly record those thoughts!’
I’ve been doing a lot of my own reflection this week. And yes, some of it was captured on my phone whilst I was walking my dog. The campaign has really reinforced for me the value of engaging with our wider OT community via social media and its potential as a CPD activity.
OT Week has traditionally been a dedicated time for OTs to engage in activities which raise awareness of our fantastic profession. And that’s exactly what this year’s campaign is designed to do! But what is also clear to me, is the potential learning that we can all take from OT Week 2022 and the activities we’ve engaged in.
Many of us have been sharing our OT life hacks on social media. But we’ve also been sharing our views and reflections on this year’s campaign. It’s prompted discussion and analysis about the concept of a hack, its relevance to occupational therapy, our opinion of the language and public perceptions of our profession.
This is a fantastic example in action of how engaging in conversations on social media, as a ‘lurker’ or an active participant, is a great CPD activity.
I’ve listened to people sharing their reflections and their thought processes about the concept of life hacks. I’ve observed conversations and debates and have watched peoples’ opinions evolve, their perspective broadened or been asserted as they too have listened to others’ views. Perspectives have come from people’s lived experiences and from their own occupational therapy practice, some based on theoretical viewpoints and others analysing their opinion through the lens of the philosophical underpinnings of our profession. Some have supplemented their thoughts by sharing interesting readings or signposting to useful resources.
As these conversations have played out across the week, I’ve seen occupational therapists demonstrate their critical thinking, their ability to respectfully challenge, confidently assert their professional values and show leadership by promoting our profession.
So, this OT Week, we’ve shone a very bright light on the profession of occupational therapy and the professionalism of occupational therapists. Sharing OT life hacks has been an accessible way to show the world that, quite simply, occupational therapists have the expertise to support people to engage in what they need or love to do. But within this public space, the occupational therapy community has also demonstrated our diversity, our expertise, our broad knowledge base and the complexity of our profession.
But now that OT Week 2022 has closed, let’s not stop these discussions. Let’s make the most of the opportunity this week has given us to stop and think about how we understand our profession and how it’s understood by others. Think about how learning from observing or taking part in discussions about this topic might influence how you tell others what you do or frame a debate with a student or a colleague from outside of our profession.
And let’s continue to really value the professional connections we make through social media, the communities we are part of and the opportunities they offer for respectful and challenging debate. The opportunity this offers to hear other’s views, to challenge our thinking, to widen our perspectives, to be brave and bold in our ideas and actions, and to make a really positive impact on our own continuing professional development and the continuing development of occupational therapy.