Changing Settings as an Occupational Therapist: What Does the Journey Look Like?

Hello readers! I am Katerina Tsanaktsi, SPOT Europe’s Social Media Coordinator and Occupational Therapy student from Greece. This blog post is about the future and sending the message that is never too late to do what you want.

Choosing our path

It’s so strange how we should decide our occupation and our studies at a very young age and how this makes a mark on us. It’s not easy to know what you like so young and that’s why a lot of times people study one thing and end up doing something else. The story tells a true story of an occupational therapist who started his career as a pediatric occupational therapist with years of experience with children and a master’s degree in child psychology, but along the way chose to change direction and work with older adults. At first, he thought he wouldn’t make it and that there were better people than him already doing it, but that didn’t let him give up and he kept trying to make what he truly wanted happen.

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International Student Experience – Erasmus Internship in Belgium

In Ghent University (source: private picture)

Hello, everyone! I’m Aleyna Kayım, Blogger of Spoteurope, and I’m thrilled to share with you today my journey through my Erasmus Internship, a transformative experience that has left an indelible mark on me. Throughout this internship, I’ve had the opportunity to immerse myself in a world of new experiences, challenges, and growth, both personally and professionally. Join me as I delve into the details of this adventure and reflect on the profound impact it has had on my life.

New journey

In Ghent University (source: private picture)

As a recently graduated occupational therapist participating in the Erasmus program, I had the privilege of undertaking a two-month internship at Ghent University’s Occupational Therapy Research Unit. This experience proved to be instructive, allowing me to delve into the processes of academic research within the field. During my time at the research unit, I actively engaged in diverse research activities, from literature reviews to data collection and analysis, working alongside experienced researchers. This opportunity not only deepened my understanding of occupational therapy principles but also equipped me with essential research skills, fostering a foundation for my future endeavors in the academic realm of occupational therapy.

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Universal Design and Occupational Therapy: Inclusivity and More 

Hello everyone,

I am Spoteurope’s Blogger Aleyna Kayım. In this month’s blog, as an occupational therapy student, I would like to briefly explain a core term, universal design, which is a concept that attracts my attention in interdisciplinary fields. As occupational therapy students and occupational therapists, I believe we need to explore this concept term, which contains a very inclusive and deep meaning. So let’s take a closer look at this term!

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Experiencing the “Acessible Life” Fair As An Occupational Therapy Student

Hello, I am Rabia Yaşar. I am a second-year student at Hacettepe University Occupational Therapy Department. I am currently the Activity Coordinator at miniSPOT Hacettepe.

As miniSPOT Hacettepe, we meet with our occupational therapy student friends on different platforms. We organize events together in light of our different perspectives. In addition to these, we organize English-speaking club activities called SPOTing in order to practice English. I moderated them and still doing it, and this made an incredible contribution to self-confidence in my English speaking.

I participated in the “Accessible Life” Fair held in Istanbul on December 1-4, 2023 in order to expand my network, communicate with company officials that we can work with, and meet with occupational therapy students and teachers in other schools. During the fair, I took part in the Occupational Therapy Association stand. With this task, I experienced different situations that would improve me on how to explain occupational therapy to people. In addition, I had the opportunity to meet occupational therapist teachers that I had not had the opportunity to meet face-to-face before.

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PRACTICAL TIPS FOR WORKING WITH CLIENTS WHO HAVE MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES

Hello readers, my name is Martyna Gwiazda Adomako and I graduated last year (OT Bachelor’s). Where I found a job at my current position which is Occupational Therapist in a Daily Mental Health Ward. I have been working there for 1,5 years.


I have chosen this topic because I have been working in the Daily Mental Heath Department for Adults for almost a year. As I started I had some knowledge and a little bit of practice.

Although I felt like I didn’t get any advice on how to manage a therapeutic process with my patients. As I was working with this very specific group of clients. That’s why I decided to choose this topic, I believe that it might be helpful for some of the readers. Knowledge is the key to a therapist’s own safety likewise their patient.

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NEW BOARD MEMBERS AND SPOTINAR

Hello everyone!  

My name is Aleyna, and I am currently a fourth-year Occupational Therapy student from Turkey and new Blogger for SPOTeurope.  

First, I would like to thank Kira, who has done a great job as a Blogger and is currently Event Coordinator, for her support throughout the process. She has produced precious and exciting content by collaborating and sharing thoughts, actions, and impressions hers and yours. It is with great gratitude that I now take over this work from her. 

Another new member on the board, Angela is taking on a new role (social media coordinator). She is from Spain, and just recently joined the team. She will definitely create great content with her high level of motivation and creativity.

For your questions about Social Media, you can always contact us at so*********@sp********.eu

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THE NEED FOR EMPATHY IN THE OCCUPATIONAL THERAPIST-INDIVIDUAL RELATIONSHIP

Hello readers, this is Katerina Tsanaktsi, an occupational therapy student from Greece. I’m so glad to be part of the SPOT and write so interesting articles about our job. Occupational therapy needs talented and committed workers and fortunately our community has plenty of them! I hope you enjoy reading my article and be inspired by the utility of empathy! 

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A STUDENT PERSPECTIVE: OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY IN AN INTERDISICPLINARY TEAM

Hello everyone!
My name is Aleyna Kayım and I’m a fourth-year student in the bachelor’s program in
Occupational Therapy at Hacettepe University, Turkey.
I wanted to write a blog on this subject and share my perspective with you because I believe
that interdisciplinary approaches and the necessity of having this perspective are very
valuable in OT.
Although concepts such as multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary are terms
that I have started to hear since the moment I started the department, I think that I could fully
understand it with a course related to the field during the semester. During the course
content, how different professional groups work with OT in an interdisciplinary environment
was explained with case examples.

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ENOTHE Annual Meeting 2022 in Tbilisi, Georgia

This year’s ENOTHE annual meeting took place from October 12th – 16th in Tbilisi. Our Student Board Member Vanessa Rozalina, President Julie Valckx and Blogger Kira Hanßmann were there in Person. 

The location of the annual meeting was the beautiful old building of the “Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University”.

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From student to professional occupational therapist – tips from Emmi

The alarm clock is waking you up and you are getting ready for your first day as an occupational therapist. Your mind is full of both excitement and insecurity. It was just short a time ago when you were sitting in a lecture and waiting to graduate. Now you have the piece of paper that proves you are a qualified occupational therapist. While you are packing your backpack you realise that besides all the joyful excitement, you are also packing some discouraging questions: Do I have enough knowledge for this job? Did I work enough during the internships? How are the colleagues and clients like? And the biggest question of all: Am I ready?

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WFOT Congress 2022 in Paris – SPOT recap

Hello OT-students,

This month’s blog addresses the WFOT congress in Paris that took place from the 28th until the 31st of August. Three of the board members, Megan (Outreach), Ulrik (General), and I, Kira (Blogger) were able to attend this event. Firstly, we would like to thank ENOTHE for giving us the opportunity to represent SPOTeurope at such a big event. We are very grateful for it! At SPOTeurope we aim to promote students to look beyond their country’s border as upcoming OTs. What better way to do that than visit the biggest congress the OT world has to offer? The following text is a recap of that experience:

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A student perspective: Technology and Digitalization in OT

Hello SPOTeurope community,

If you are a follower of our SPOT events, you may already know me, if not here it goes. My name is Bruna Bastos, I am an occupational therapist and also student of the MSc in Hand Therapy at the School of Health Sciences in Leiria, Portugal.

Today I’m writing this blog to you because I want to share with you my perspective on the use of technology and digitalization in OT.

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A take on the stigmatisation and understanding of mental illnesses

this blog includes a personal experience report on depression

Hello everyone,

this is the blogger writing to you. Considering it’s mental health awareness month, I recently gave the question some thought on how one could describe mental health or mental illness. Who decides when your mental status is fine? Is there a “normal” mental state?

Adding to that, a friend of mine kindly agreed to talk about her personal experience with depression and the prejudices she faced. I would like to thank her for being open and honest about her experience. To clear up stigmas surrounding the subject it needs to be talked about.

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Full academization for OT – A current topic in Germany

Why you should read the following text:

It’s about the future of OT! The topic of academization is a very important topic in the OT world. In the following, we will discuss full academization related to the situation in Germany. Other countries are well involved too, so this may be of interest to many OT students.

Why is academization important for best practice? Who is involved? What Science says. Why now?

https://www.freevector.com/graduation-hat-illustration-31227
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A student perspective: The importance of internationalisation

Hello fellow OT students!
I am excited to present a new idea we tried out for the blog section: A certain topic is presented by any member of SPOT, to which the whole community can share their views.
Ulrik, our general board member, wrote down some thoughts he had on the topic of internationalisation and why it is so important. On our instagram feed we shared a poll, asking for your opinion on internationalisation. I quoted some of your answers further down in the blog post.
We hope this may inspire you to get active and exchange your thoughts with OT students worldwide, keep your minds open and embrace new possibilites through international exchange! 🙂

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Reflecting before our summer break!

General announcement

Greetings everyone,

We hope that you are doing well and enjoying your summer vacation so far!

In this month’s blog, we would love to share with you a small but comprehensive update on our actions and events as well as inform you that we will be out of office from the (already passed) 29th of July till the 22nd of August! We will still be active on our social media and replying to emails, but expect a small delay since we are all taking some time off to cool down from such a tiring and demanding year.

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Overcoming obstacles related to placement

Introduction


Hi everyone!

It is nice writting to you, once again, and this month I have something more ‘personal’ that I want to share with you.

During the past month, I have been reflecting a lot on my previous placements for an assignment that is due 3 weeks from now and I realized that I have experienced some difficulties during these placements which I would love to share with you.

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A great start to learning about Occupational Therapy

Introduction

Hello everyone!

It is officially the first Saturday of March which means that you are reading our newest blog 😀

This blog post is very special to me since I will be narrating to you, in cooperation with a dear colleague of mine, Aspa Argyri, the first occupational module we took when we started our studies, in 2018!

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Experiencing occupational disruption as an OT student

Hello everyone!

For this month’s blog I decided to talk about one of the most common phenomena we, OT’s, encounter during both our studies and clinical practices: occupational disruption. Even though most of you might be familiar with this term I shall briefly go through the literature so we can all be on the same page:

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