This week’s #OTalk will be hosted by @pd2ot, an occupational therapy student who, once upon a time, as a service user, thought that “OT is for thick people” (link opens in new window).

I often wonder why I had such disdain for OT. I do believe that the absence of understanding the rationale of the therapy was a major barrier. When you are endlessly handed sheets of colouring in to do, with felt tip pens that have nearly dried up because you can’t be trusted with a pencil sharpener, it’s understandable that you feel somewhat infantilised. Especially as art was a pretty traumatic experience at school. If someone had said, ‘what areas do you feel you can’t do the things you want and need to do in?’ and ‘Ok, let’s look at the steps we might take to get you back to that level of functioning’ I might have been more co-operative. I also would have been more convinced that I wasn’t trying to be distracted from being a nuisance on the ward if I’d been given age-appropriate (and perhaps intellect-appropriate) things to do.

We invite service users, carers, students and multi-disciplinary professionals to join us at 8pm BST to discuss experiences of when occupational therapy has not lived up to its potential (bearing in mind confidentiality), with the aim of exploring what impacts on quality of care and how this could be improved. 

@pd2ot has created a list of questions to consider in preparation for the chat on her blog. I hope these will provide a starting point for an interesting discussion, where we openly consider each other’s experiences and reflect on the influences on practice.

(PS, as you may have guessed, @pd2ot changed her mind about occupational therapy… 🙂 )

Read the chat transcript here