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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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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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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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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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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My occupational therapy perspective on my Nepal trip

Introduction

Hi all,

My name is Silvester and I am in the second year of the bachelor’s program in Occupational Therapy at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences. Besides studying, I really enjoy doing things together with friends, like playing sports, taking walks or making music.

In this blog, I will tell you about my experiences in Nepal. I hope you find it entertaining! 🙂

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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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Outcomes of student-lead research regarding the effects of COVID-19 on education

In our OT school, it is the custom, that every first-year course does a project about professional policies. At first, our plan was to organize the national meeting of students from all over Germany, which takes place every year, in our school. But unfortunately, the pandemic made it impossible. Suddenly we had to do home office and didn’t hear much from each other. We asked ourselves how our schoolmates felt with this education and life situation especially regarding any deficits in learning and how they cope with the time alone without getting depressed or lonely. Which we thought it would be interesting to report to other students all over the world.

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Experiencing OT as a third-party

Hello everyone!

This month I decided to give the spotlight to people wanting to talk about their OT experiences, outside of their studies. The following texts do not necessarily coincide with what we have learned in our studies, they are related to experiences linked with loved ones or acquainted people receiving occupational therapy.

if you would like to know more about it you can always contact Jennie via email: JW******@ca********.uk or via Twitter (@jwebot), Akylina via email: pa************@ho*****.gr, and Martyna via email: ma*************@gm***.com

Furthermore, feel free to contact me about your ideas on the content of our next blog as well as whether you would like to be one of our guest bloggers!

Till next time, stay safe and active,
Emmanouela Kanetaki | Blogger

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An intriguing, hands-on, OT program in Croatia!

Greetings everyone. My name is Iva Hendelja, I’m 21 years old and currently on my third and final year of Occupational therapy at the University of Applied Health Sciences in Zagreb, Croatia, which is also the only university to provide a 3 year OT program. Unfortunately, here in Croatia, you can only study OT at a bachelor’s level since there are no master’s or PhD programs yet.

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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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An unforgetable heartwarming experience at São Miguel

Hello fellow OT students,


My name is Ana Gaspar and I am currently waiting to start my fourth and last year as an occupational therapy student in Escola Superior de Saúde de Leiria, Portugal. The past three years of my studies have been quite a ride, let me break it down for you!

When I first discovered that I got in OT school, I had mixed feelings because it was not my first choice. I had always wanted to be a nurse mainly because my goal as a professional is to help people in need, but little did I know! When I got to learn more thoroughly about what OT is all about, I fell instantly in love with the profession and the thought of changing courses suddenly didn’t matter to me anymore.

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Occupational Therapy in Wrocław, Poland

Introduction

Martyna Gwiazda

Hello everyone,

My name is Martyna Gwiazda and I am a third year Occupational Therapy student (OT) in Wrocław, Poland. Being this month’s guest blogger gave me the chance to share a little bit of an insight about OT in Poland. I will be describing the reality of our profession in my country, both advantages and disadvantages included! 🙂

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