Ms Margaret Bracher DipCOT, MSc Erg

Lecturer and Back Care Adviser

Ms Maggie Bracher is an Occupational Therapist lecturing within the Health Sciences at the University of Southampton. Maggie specialises in ergonomics, back care and moving and handling, teaching across all pre-registration programmes within the school. As a back care adviser, member of the National Back Exchange and moving and handling lead for the school, she also advises and updates colleagues on moving and handling relevant to professional practice in the field.

I believe passionately that Occupational Therapists have a wider role to play than those linked to Health or Social Care services

To this end, I specialise in promoting, developing and supporting national and international non-traditional and role-emerging practice placements for our occupational therapy students. I also mentor therapists working in role emerging environments.

My research and development interests focus around ergonomic design of equipment and systems for optimum accessibility and usability by individuals and groups of people. As an extension of this interest, I am the Occupational Therapy representative on the Southampton panel of REMAP.

Additional interests include the use of animals and natural environments in therapy and these aspects are built into the Occupational Therapy pre-registration programme. In 2015, I collaborated in setting up a national occupational therapy special interest group in Equine Based Therapies.