Southampton hosting a week of learning for Occupational Therapy students from Southampton, Sweden and Ireland

Taking place from 9th–13th October the week’s schedule focusses on emerging areas of practice within occupational therapy with Southampton hosting students from Lund University Sweden and National University of Ireland Galway.

Students will work together with a range of charities and statutory services to develop role-emerging placement proposals that demonstrate the ‘added value’ an occupational perspective might offer. At the end of the week they will present their ideas at a conference streamed live to all participating institutions.

Health Sciences at Southampton has a proven track record in the delivery of role-emerging placements in new and innovative areas of practice to help improve the health and wellbeing of individuals, groups and communities. New posts have been secured in a range of settings including Help for Heroes, palliative care and mother and baby units.

The schedule of events for students across the week includes:

• Keynote 1: Including harder to reach populations: why health literacy is important for occupational therapists.
  Professor Jo Adams, Professor of Musculoskeletal Health, University of Southampton; Director of Fortisnet Institute of Life Sciences
• Keynote 2: Coproduction: What is it and why does it matter? A discussion
  Dr Claire Ballinger, Strategic Lead Wessex Public Involvement Network (PIN) and Mark Stafford-Watson, Patient and Public Involvement Champion, NIHR CLAHRC Wessex
• Working with Role emerging placements to redesign and develop statutory services
  Rebecca Burgos – Lead Occupational Therapist –Solent NHS Trust
• Student experiences of role emerging placements:
  Eleanor Fox – preparing for role emerging placements
  Kosiwa Lokuso – opportunities and challenges of role emerging placements
  Claire Walker – impact of role emerging placements on your professional career
• Project work with local charities to identify the occupational gaps in their services

The University of Southampton and Lund University have been collaborating for some time to identify a common strategy that extends traditional Erasmus exchange arrangements and makes the internationalisation of the curriculum a reality for all their OT students.

In 2017 they were joined by the National University of Ireland – Galway and gained funding from the EU Erasmus Plus fund to develop the model so that students’ can interact with one another to help deepen their professional identity and develop their knowledge of global health and social care issues.

As well as the week long exchange event, the strategy also includes a six week web-exchange programme and conference in February 2018.

Project lead, Dr Juliette Truman is looking forward to welcoming guests from our partner institutions:

“Our exciting partnerships with Lund and Galway, coupled with the use of technology will extend traditional Erasmus exchange arrangements and make the internationalisation of the curriculum a reality for all OT students. The project has already shown that engaging in study together strengthens students’ understanding of their profession and the contributions that they can make to marginalised groups and individuals.

With greater diversity within our own communities and the need for health and social care professions to seek new solutions to manage health and social care demands, Universities are charged with developing creative and resilient practitioners. International approaches such as this offer new ways of equipping and inspiring our students to work differently in the future.”

If you are inspired, interested or are developing your curricula in this way and would like to know more, please do get in touch with Dr Juliette Truman : J.Truman@soton.ac.uk