Category: Students’ experiences

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From student to professional occupational therapist – tips from Emmi

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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 student perspective: Technology and Digitalization in OT

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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

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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

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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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International Student Experience – Internship in Bulgaria

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Dear SPOT community,

Infront of the Ruse-sign (source: private picture)

We are Milena Horst, Raquel Müller, and Kira Hanßmann. We are currently studying occupational therapy in our third year at the ETOS (School of OT in Osnabrück) and University of Applied Sciences Osnabrück, in Germany.

For the past four weeks, we had the opportunity to get an insight of OT in Bulgaria, specifically in Ruse.

In the following we are going to tell you about our internship and further experiences we had.

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International Student Experience: Occupation-based perspective on Social Inclusion – Iceland, Akureyri

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It is the 1st of November 2021 and 27 OT-students from all over Europe have been waiting for the date to arrive. A date that has been full of uncertainty since there currently is a global pandemic going on. It has been a challenging time. The courageous participants have been trapped behind their own boarders and having to suppress the adventurous traveler within them for the past two years. And yet, everyone who was supposed to be there is standing in the classroom at the University of Akureyri, Iceland. That is why SPOTeurope have gathered a collection of tales from the NORDPLUS course about an occupation-based perspective on social inclusion. A unique opportunity in what we can currently call a limited world. So please enjoy the company of Eline, Mirja, Thomas, Pauliin, Malin and Unnur as they share their perspectives.

Introduction by: Ulrik, General Board Member

private picture
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Two very special internships in the Netherlands!

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Hello everyone,

My name is Evelien Spoormakers and I am an occupational therapy student at Zuyd Hogeschool in the Netherlands. I’m writing this blog because I want to tell you something about the internships I’ve done and the experiences I gained there, because there are not the most obvious internships for an OT student. That’s what made this internships so interesting! First I will shortly tell you something about my first internship in the disabled care. I started this internship in September 2019.

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Overcoming obstacles related to placement

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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

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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 OT as a third-party

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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: JWEBST10@caledonian.ac.uk or via Twitter (@jwebot), Akylina via email: papadopoulou50@hotmail.gr, and Martyna via email: martynagwiazda0@gmail.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!

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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

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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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