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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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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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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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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