Do What You Love

Ep. 7. Virtual Placements: Preceptors Edition

November 06, 2020 Season 1 Episode 7
Do What You Love
Ep. 7. Virtual Placements: Preceptors Edition
Show Notes Transcript

What are occupational therapists doing to facilitate virtual placements? In today's episode, Anna chats with fieldwork coordinators and placement educators: Lisa Taylor, Teresa Rushton, and Margaret Spencer, and online education expert, Gilly Salmon, about how we delivered placements in the virtual space during COVID. 

Highlights include:

- Learn about the Peer-enhanced e-placement (PEEP)  placement model developed by Dr. Lisa Taylor and Gilly Salmon at the University of East Anglia
- Learn about how Margaret Spencer, from Sheffield-Hallam University, and her students developed their virtual placement around online communities before COVID even began
- Learn about the virtual placement that Teresa Rushton hosted at the University of Derby - where students were working on projects promoting wellbeing amongst staff and students
- Learn about the virtual placement that I hosted in community-based private practice


You can find out more information on the 5-stage model for online learning: https://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html

More information on PEEP placements: https://www.hee.nhs.uk/our-work/allied-health-professions/occupational-therapy-virtual-practice-placement

Amelia Fletcher:

Welcome to the"Do What You Love" podcast. We believe that doing and belonging contribute to wellbeing. And through this podcast, we will explore how to share strategies for doing exactly that: what you love. Although some members are health and wellbeing professionals. This podcast provides wellness management in an informational manner only. Under no circumstances should this podcast substitute for a call or visit with a health care professional that is or can become familiar with your lived experience.

Anna Braunizer:

Hello everyone. And welcome to today's episode of the Do What You Love podcast. Today, I am joined by some preceptors and fieldwork coordinators for placements in the UK, and we discuss what we did so that we could make placements happen in the virtual environment. I hope you enjoy. So, hi everyone, and welcome to the Do What You Love podcast. Thank you for joining me today. I am bringing you all together because now that COVID has happened, we're all kind of shifting into virtual placements and Margaret and I spoke about this months, months, and months ago, but we're all shifting into virtual placements and... it's kind of shifted the way that we do things as occupational therapists, as coordinators, as preceptors and the way that we can support students in their learning and becoming occupational therapists themselves. So I thought I'd start out with this round table. With me today, I have Teresa Rushton, Lisa Taylor, Gilly Salmon, and Margaret Spencer, and we're going to be talking about virtual placements and what they can look like as we move our profession forward. So, first off: what kinds of virtual placements are you involved with and what's your role?

Gilly Salmon:

Sure. Hi, it's Gilly Salmon here. I'm from the UK. I've been working with Dr. Lisa Taylor, who is an occupational therapist. So I'm an educational technology professor and I've been supporting her particularly to have very good pedagogical approaches to online virtual placements, initially for her occupational therapy students during the emergency time. But since then we've been working together to make it available across a lot more patient or therapists and a wide range of other allied health professions. So, my role has been really to bring online learning to the virtual placement scene so that you don't have to reinvent everything and you can get the best of the research that's been going on in pre COVID era. If any of you remember that?

Lisa Taylor:

Yeah. And just to add to that from, from my perspective, I, I created the original peer-enhanced e-placement-we call it a PEEP- and that was in response to our occupational therapy students needing to have a placement. their face-to-face placement had been postponed or, actually, Ceased, because of COVID. so we needed to have something they could do there and then, but it needed to be credible and really have the placement learning outcomes at the heart of it. so we, try to mirror it as much as possible, what they would have experienced on a face-to-face placement, but just didn't have that face-to-face patient contact, all of the other sort of processes around the placement of the paperwork, the long-arm supervision. then managing a caseload was all part of the structure of the PEEP, but very much having those placement outcomes at the center, but it just being and delivered online.

Anna Braunizer:

Cool.

Margaret Spencer:

I'm Margaret Spencer I'm a senior lecturer at Sheffield Hallam university and a consultant OT and my student and I started the online virtual placement before even COVID hit and she has a disability, she's got cerebral palsy. So we were thinking about this quite a long time before, obviously any of this. So we developed some plans, the online placement and we just ran it. And, you know, like you said Lisa, because she was on the, you know, the same placement as everybody else, we had to keep all the same learning outcomes and the same, use exactly the same documentations as the other students. And we found that we were able to meet all the outcomes. The focus of it was looking at online communities and the value of those with people with disabilities. And it's really coming to focus for everybody else actually. So yeah, that's what we did. it was really, really, really interesting and really valuable experience.

Gilly Salmon:

That was great anticipation, Margaret well done!

Anna Braunizer:

I was really fortunate to chat with you in the early days and I was following along with Georgia and everything early on, so it was a great learning opportunity to learn from you and connect to you early on. And Teresa...

Teresa Rushton:

Hi...so my name's Teresa, I'm a lecturer at a university in the UK. And, similarly we, because the placement capacity challenges because of COVID in the summer, we had a number of students that required placements. And so we designed and developed a placement for four of our pre-reg masters students, and that were actually based with us within the university, within the OT department. So the nature of that project, which was all virtual, was twofold: one, they had an individual project which kind of followed the OT process. Their overall target was really to kind of be thinking about, the occupational needs and health and wellbeing of students within a university. So within their individual projects, they looked at a population of students. So, one student looked at, the occupational needs and health and wellbeing of mature students, someone else about international students. another student looked at students with eating disorders, so different kinds of individual aspects of projects, and they were also involved in a group project whereby they developed, a teaching package for lecturers within the university about the health and wellbeing, of all students across the university sector. So that was my experience. I supervised two of the students that were on placement with us and helped to develop. And as both Lisa and Margaret have already said, we, when we were preparing the placement, developing the placement, we made sure that it was structured and that it met all of the learning outcomes. we mapped to our assessment documentation and made sure that the students were going to be able to meet their, their learning outcomes for the placement.

Anna Braunizer:

That's so sweet. For our listeners, I was also a preceptor. So I had a student in the summer. I'm in community based occupational therapy, which means I'm on the road all the time or seeing clients via telehealth right now. So we had this hybrid model and with me, a student couldn't see all the people I was working with they didn't have consent for that. So we had to look at, okay, what's OT's role in program design and evaluation. I had luckily just been TA-ing a course at Dalhousie in program design and evaluation so I could bring that. And we're like, how can we improve our services and build more resources for our service? this is an opportunity for the student to practice and develop clinical reasoning pathways and stuff that we can now use in our practice and the student can take away with them as well. Thank you everyone. I'm excited to learn more as we go through this podcast. So our next question: what did you most enjoy about hosting a placement virtually?

Lisa Taylor:

I think from my point of view, it was a really nice opportunity to sort of innovate and explore and design and evaluate a new model of placement that I think without COVID we wouldn't necessarily have had the opportunity to do. You know, being able to model it around what those usual placement processes and paperwork and, and learning outcomes would have been, but delivering it online. And then the evaluation came through so strongly from the students about their learning around professional reasoning and the live sessions that have been able to do and their OT process. And they stayed, but then everything that was, you know, really pleasing when they've done that evaluation. And then when I was looking around the peer group learning as well, that came through really, really strongly and suggested learning that might not have otherwise happened on a usual face-to-face placement in a traditional setting. so that was really pleasing from my point of view that virtual placement learning couldn't only just be equivalent, it could be better in some cases. And certainly that peer enhanced learning, that aim from the evaluation, so strongly was something that was really exciting and certainly Gilly when I realized about your five stages of learning. that was equally exciting for you. I think wasn't it? About how that mapped onto the learning that that was evaluated from the students.

Gilly Salmon:

I know. I mean, the five stage model has been around quite a long time, and a lot of people are rediscovering it, or finding it for the first time, if you like, and that was the case for Lisa. But the interesting thing is it is a grounded model based on what people do given the opportunity. And it was quite extraordinary. The extent to which her emergency response to the OT placements had followed that. and that some of the benefits were emerged without her needing to know about the model because she had set the examples up in that way. So obviously we've moved from that now to telling people about it so they can set it up in that way. But definitely it was very much about, inclusion, the diversity aspects, the ability for people to learn constructively from each other, rather than just on a one-to-one basis, which You know, it's more likely to happen in a clinical situation.

Lisa Taylor:

So certainly to the COVID side of things, we had students from Hong Kong who said there was that accessibility thing about it, about the online learning was that was accessible to everybody, wherever they were as well. so really I think it confirmed that you could do this and you could even have emergent properties.

Gilly Salmon:

And I suppose that's, what's, everyone's saying really aren't, they, that you know, get it even half, right and the students will find it a great, great learning.

Margaret Spencer:

Yeah, I felt, I really got to know the student very well. Obviously my student had a disability and we were able to be really flexible. You know, if she had a difficult night, we could adapt to that. She had her own chair at home, so that was easier for her to work rather than having to trek to placement and dah, dah, dah, dah. And I just felt the whole thing was more, much more flexible. I got to know her really well. Her strengths. Working around everything. And actually I had four other students at the same time around the world, emerging placements. And actually the student on this placement came out and scored the highest on the same assessment form. So it just kind of shows. And the other two students work with people with learning disability and two in a kind of community placement and as COVID hit and they had to kind of like fend for themselves, they really just went into,'Oh, I don't think we're I don't know what we can do' and went into problem solving, but she'd been really, really proactive from the start cause we'd set it up. We planned it and she actually came out top of the five students. So it was interesting having five students who were having to make the transition halfway through and somebody who'd been on the journey all the way through. And I thought well'oh it's really interesting in terms of planning and preparation', and that's been kind of fed back in what we really need for students is a lot of planning and preparation more, I would think than for a kind of a normal placement.

Gilly Salmon:

And this has been the case with a lot of people across online learning and the move generally from place-based learning, to finding alternatives online. and it does need a mindset change so I suggest that your student was starting to go through that mindset change already had because of her previous life experiences. Whereas the others had to start at the beginning of that and I think pretty much, yeah, pretty much all of Lisa's and she had a lot more but it was great that you were able to make that comparison. Actually, I've done that with some of the face-to-face and online learning and, and consistently as a cohort, you'll find: if the online learning is done well, and that built-in flexibility is there in various ways, and you ensure that it's not just delivery of resources, but instead it's about building the community, they do better. They, you know, as a whole, they get better outcomes. You get better retention. and people don't believe me, but you've just said the same.

Margaret Spencer:

It's always nice to know

Anna Braunizer:

Yes anecdotal evidence.

Teresa Rushton:

I think what we enjoyed the most was as similar to what Margaret said, really: I think being able to collaborate so closely with the students and work so closely with them. I think we felt that we learned as much. You know, from working with the students, both from a professional lens, that kinds of personal perspective, as the students did. And it was just really lovely to see that development over time. I think exactly what kinds of Lisa and Gilly are saying with regards to the peer support. We had 4 students to get working on that kinds of group project together. And, really helped not only to develop their digital literacy skills, but also their confidence, their teamwork and their leadership skills. They're all. Their independence and you know, the things that they've reported back to us at the end of this placement was that they felt much better prepared for future practice because the working situation is not going to go away. Many, many people are working remotely and virtually. And so they felt that actually they'd have the opportunity to upscale in many of these areas and to kind of develop their communication skills through the online forums and things. It also offered us an opportunity as staff. As staff members to kind of, kind of facilitate supervision and so it was really good to be working so closely with each other as well and learning from each other, I think really.

Anna Braunizer:

Well, thank you.

Margaret Spencer:

Yeah, it was much more collaborative than a normal placement because there were things I had. Do you know, like how, how we did the, how we got it or put it all into how we recorded it like this and then put it up on YouTube. I had no idea. Georgia had the time to kind of look into that, to research it. And then she told me. So there were a lot of things that we were collaborators who were much more collaborative than we have the kind of like the student-educator kind of relationship. Much more how we're puzzling through this together, which was, which was really, really positive and really nice for both of us I think.

Anna Braunizer:

Yeah. I think I, for me, with the student I worked with, I was pretty upfront. I'm like, we are going to be co-designing this placement. Like it's my first time doing it. This is your first time doing it. We're going to look at opportunities and then we can look at things and things came up in the placement. first week, I learned that Microsoft teams used 1.5 gigabytes of data. And I was like, how is this going to be sustainable for an eight week placement? this is a very big chunk of data and we navigated that using different methods of communication. but it's just really about teamwork and we're really working together as a team to make this a possibility. And I think we connected a lot more than we would have on other placements. And it's something I think we can carry forward to placements when they're in-person again just keep growing the way we do placements. Gilly, I know, has to leave so the next question is: what do you recommend for future students or preceptors considering offering virtual placements?

Gilly Salmon:

so if I just go first to say on this, I mean, what Lisa and I have done is, through everything that she, evaluated fortunately on her original, PEEP approach, is offer it out much more widely as an acquisition package. So it's a bit of a flipped approach with pre-work. So people think about applied to their processes. Then a three and a half hour synchronous workshop with both of us in it and then some follow up work. And we've already been successful in this with a number of OTs. But as I mentioned earlier, it's also going out now to nursing and also a range of other allied health professionals. And we contextualize in the moment for OTPs operating theater practitioners. So this has been our, dissemination strategy. We realized this was so important and they have developed a range of models of how it might apply to assist with both capacity and capability because it is a huge problem for across the country at the moment. so that's what we've been working on. We've barely lifted our head above the parapet to see what's going on elsewhere, but that is definitely working and we're getting constant inquiries about it. And Lisa can tell you more about how they're actually applying that.

Anna Braunizer:

Well, thank you for your time today.

Lisa Taylor:

Yeah, thank you, Gilly. So I suppose my recommendation for future students, and considering offering virtual placements, I would say trust the process, and trust the learning that can happen virtually. but it does need to be done in a well organized and supported and constructed way because I think something that we find from the peer learning is it wasn't just the peer support, it's the way that the timetable had been constructed to allow them autonomy of learning, but also coming back to their peer groups and having to justify their decision-making really got that depth of professional reasoning. So I think, you know, things being very well organized and constructed- pedagogically sound I think people should trust online learning and not placement learning has to be face-to-face and hands-on clinical skills. There's lots of things that can be learned virtually that are as important as those hands-on clinical skills as well.

Margaret Spencer:

Yeah There's something about the profession where we don't actually have to touch people have to be touching distance that actually we can connect with people. We can have relationships you know locally, nationally, and internationally. So it opens up the scope for delivery. And I think we need to kind of take that on as a profession as well. And I think, you know, I see quite a lot of OTs and they've had to, so where people were always going to day centers, now they meet in a virtual pub and you know, so this isn't going away anytime tomorrow. So as our students, our MSc students qualify in December- so they'll be going into this world. So I think preparing people for that and acknowledging that, yes, it's different, but it's equally as valid for our service users. And I think that was one of the things that the place would show that online communities are really, really important for people with disabilities. And as a team, we need to connect into those online communities. They've already that they say, why are you dragging me into clinic when you could've just gone:'everything okay?''Yup, great.' I could have just kept my slippers on. So I think there's a lot of things that we need to kind of like rethink as a, as a profession as well.

Teresa Rushton:

I think, you know, it's really important, isn't it, as, as Lisa and Margaret, that I think from a kind of educator perspective that we have to be prepared and we've got to plan and structure the placements and make sure that they do match to the learning outcomes. And you know, that students have an awareness of that, but I love the idea of the fact that, you know students also need to trust in the systems. You know, when I was thinking about what we'd say to students, I was thinking that we'd say, you know, kind of relaxed and have a bit more confidence in, you know, the, the process, the system, your educators, because I think what we found was certainly initially there was that fear and anxiety from the student's perspective, that this is very different to a traditional placement where I'm going to see lots and lots of patients and have lots of opportunity to develop those interpersonal skills. And I think actually when they reflected on the virtual experience, they still even you know reflected that actually they'd gained loads of skills in terms of their communication. and in terms of their interpersonal skills, both working together as a team, but also through the facilitation of working with kind of service users. I think that trust and having confidence in a system is important as well.

Anna Braunizer:

Mmhmm

Lisa Taylor:

Yeah As well as being an associate professor in occupational therapy, I'm also associate Dean for employability, so I suppose I come to things like this with that sort of employability hat on as well. And I've recently written something around placements- an employability roadmap for placements and on the road, do you notice the sign posts about all of the things that you can learn on a placement. Only one of those signposts clinical skills and professional specific clinical skills, all of the other signposts that all of the other things that you're learning on placement, that are required of a healthcare professional. yes, those clinical hands-on skills are crucial, but, there's a lot of really other important learning that goes on in that placement environment that can be replicated and transferable into, into the online, online environment as well.

Anna Braunizer:

Yeah. And I think in my role, I work lots in mental health or with people with chronic conditions. So a lot of that was easily transferable into the virtual space and still using all those clinical skills, like it's... well, I have parts that are hands-on with the home modifications and seating. My role is a little bit of everything almost. I just don't do splinting, but everything else, I do a little bit of I dabble everywhere. so it was really easy. I think OT in chronic pain, mental health, chronic conditions, post concussion you can really translate those skills and still get that clinical skills training.

Margaret Spencer:

I think for the students, it's kind of reassurance. I think the planning has to be a lot more before the placements because you're not just rocking up and there's, there's the, there's the clinic. That's the hospital. It's all, it's all touchable. I think just that planning before,"this is what we're going to do... this is what we do roughly week by week... this is how it's going to do... what are you going to bring to the table...that all, you know, even just a brief outline is really, really important just for that assurance that there are going to be things that you can do every single week and get the students to kind of like map that out themselves, what they're gonna do and plan that and reflections and blogs and social media and all the other things. and I think the planning before from a kind of organizational perspective has to be a lot more and a lot earlier to give students that reassurance, that there's going to be some equity between this and going into a hospital or a clinic.

Anna Braunizer:

Yeah.

Teresa Rushton:

And I guess, I think also the students need to be prepared too, you know, I think some of the things that we had some of the challenges that we face, not anything that wasn't of, that you couldn't, overcome. Technology is a nightmare isn't it, you know? It's a nightmare for all of us. So, you know, we frequently had internet, dropping out and, you know, lots and lots of different challenges. So I think, you know, for them to kind of be prepped to, and just to kind of do some basics around technology. We learnt so much about like- like you've just said, Anna- about how many gigs, you know of data you use with Microsoft. but also with teams and things, but also about switching off because of switching off Phones and things so that you've got a stronger signal, lots of different things about technology that we could then kind of share with the students and be able to kind of prep them for the best virtual kind of experience

Lisa Taylor:

We had a whole week of induction for our students and the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, sort of picked apart the PEEP afterwards, just to make sure I could map all of the learning onto their placement standards so it could be classed as a practice placement. And they queried the amount of induction that we'd put in there, but it was absolutely necessary. And I agree with Margaret that, that preparation for the student learning is crucial because you know, everything around the standards, the placement standards, the professional standards, how does this translate to online learning? How does your professional behavior and values and how does that translate to you working within groups, as peer groups, and all of the other elements that we wanted them to do within their placement, how they were going to be collecting information online that was gonna be different sort of face-to-face stuff in front of someone. so our induction week was pretty heavy, but I think it needed to be in order to prepare the students adequately for the remainder of the placement.

Margaret Spencer:

Yeah. And there's things like being safe on placement, which is translates to being safe online and having some boundaries. And when people ask more questions, it was the same, well, am I qualified to answer this and do I need to go back to someone else? It's just in a different medium, isn't it? And it's just getting your head around that I think. And just doing that translation. It was like a different language because we did it virtually and it's learning that whole new language for students as well as for ourselves. Because it's not kind of embedded into our programs, it was a massive shift quite quickly, really.

Lisa Taylor:

We had elements like about models of OT. How can you translate your work around models of OT to online delivery and your online caseload that they were going to be managing? So we went through all of the different elements of occupational therapy that you'd want them to be doing on a face-to-face traditional placement, but that translation and just giving them that hand to, to be able to make that theory-practice link into a virtual practice rather than a face-to-face practice.

Anna Braunizer:

Yeah, we're kind of like OT-ing ourselves. And I found in my role, I had this questionnaire and I was like, this is how to get to know you and also let you know the opportunities that I've scoped out that could be possible in this placement that we can, you can choose which ones are interesting to you. And we can map it out that way, come together and build the outline together. even though we co-designed the placement, there was a lot of'is this possible?' what does our team need in terms of clinical pathways? what are our areas where, if I needed a project, where could that be? Can I connect with vendors for learning and meeting vendors, because normally we'll go to vendors and do tours of their spaces and get to know the equipment, but I was like, okay, well, let's see if they can do this virtually. And luckily I had a few that I work with quite often so they were all gung ho. In Canada, we use the CMOP-E and Canadian Practice Process Framework. And then you kind of went through that framework. It's like'assess': what's out there and then'okay, let's try this.' And then sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't so you have to go back. And then now we're going to shift this intervention. where I was at with this hybrid model is it was lots of flexibility. I recommend coming in, having a plan and then being flexible to adapt the plan as the placement goes on. So the next question, if you were to host a virtual placement again, or when you host virtual placement again, what lessons would you like to take with you to improve the experience?

Lisa Taylor:

I'll let someone else go first...

Margaret Spencer:

I just think some of the things we've already said, and I think just to embed that planning. The planning, planning, planning is crucial, but also to know for the students, it's a bit of planning and a bit of organic growth and development as you go through. A bit like a rolling placement that you can have, it can have an outline. You can have a good plan for some week, but also you have to see what comes and where that and giving people permission to say that's okay.'Well, if we don't know that will be okay'... because I think that's what happens on a normal placement. It just doesn't feel like that because you're next to your educator and you think,'well, they know what they're doing', but I think it's just giving people permission for that flexibility really and that organic growth. And just embedding the planning, the things that we've learned from this, like everyone said, make sure that it's well ahead of the placements, not just kind of six weeks, I would say like starting three months, six months ahead, this isn't, this is an option. Research it yourself. Start to think about it. Think about your reflection, think of how you could do it online, how could you deliver this online? And what would you do?

Lisa Taylor:

We organized ours in 10 days, Margaret. So, you know, COVID came and where I had 10 days to get it organized. So I've come from a completely different standpoint to you and the length of time to get it organized. But that's why it was so important for the PEEP to be as closely mirrored as possible to what would be normally expected on that practice placement. So then there wasn't the monumental shift, I suppose in the way the placement was going to be delivered, even though it was online, it was obviously different in that way. but then, the general learning was, was going to be the same for the students. we have 36 students who went through that placement broken into their six groups of six. one failed one wasn't able to fulfill the, the placement outcomes and evidence that at the end in their final assessments, but everybody else was able to fulfill their right outcomes, which was great.

Margaret Spencer:

What would you do now, now that you know, you've had the experience and you did either in that half an hour?

Lisa Taylor:

Whereas Gilly and I said that we've now developed a model significantly since that based on the evaluation and we've now got the PEEP acquisition package that we're rolling out with various professions in each, each one of those workshops that we do, we learn something new that we can do with the model. so I would say that although the original PEEP was delivered purely by all academics, because we didn't have access to the placement educators because they were absolutely rammed with COVID work, it can be delivered purely by academics and can be a really valuable learning experience for students. But if you do have access to placement clinical educators who want to be involved, then they can be involved and you can do live links to the patient facing stuff. I would say that to people again is: give yourself more than 10 days to organize your PEEP. And then you'll be the sections of the timetable where you might want to be a bit more imaginative, the most disciplined routine. Is it, so the end of each week did the students did most of those were desk-based because we didn't get the time to go get people in to do it, but virtually but I would recommend it's really useful to have a, a real person and speak to the students and let them speak to them. So, yeah, I would say that. I think all of the ingredients are there with the PEEP and it can be delivered by academic staff and be a really, really valuable learning experience, but you can involve more live people and external people with it as well. And that'd be interesting to do, I think, and lots of people are now doing that.

Teresa Rushton:

And I think, probably from our perspective, we were probably somewhere in between we probably took, you know, maybe about a month to be able to kind of pull our placements together. And that was really, because we had insufficient placement capacity. We knew that we were probably going to struggle. So we were, you know, having something kind of on the back burner and so develop something might be over a month or so. I think for us, I would agree with everything that kind of Lisa and, and Margaret have already said. The preparation I think was key, but I do also think that it was very organic and I think it's continued to be that way. Because while we haven't repeated the placement as it was what the placement has allowed us to do is to have inroads into other departments within the university that actually would like to have OT students on placement. So at the moment, we've got four students in our equality, diversity, inclusion, and wellbeing service, which is much more staff focused. They're looking at kinds of wellbeing, inclusion, diversity equality from a university staff perspective. And that's going really, really well at the minute. So, I think it's enabled us too and we've been able to use a very similar kind of structure, a very similar kinds of plan and just adapt it. and again, allow it to kind of develop and, be organic in the way that it developed over the three months that those BSC third year students were out on that placement.

Anna Braunizer:

Thank you. So as this episode is probably going to be airing during the OT week in the UK, how do you think virtual placements can contribute to the growth of the occupational therapy profession?

Teresa Rushton:

I think in many, many ways. I think lots of the things that we've already talked about in terms of the skill development for the students and also the changes within the profession. And I think the changes that we've got to recognize that potentially COVID has offered us. I think we see a lot of the negatives and talk a lot about the negatives of COVID and clearly that there has been huge negatives, but, but I think it has offered us some opportunities to develop, and to develop the skills of our students in terms of developing the wider profession to be more autonomous. I think Margaret said earlier, which I think is really important: I think the virtualness of placements now does mean that we can. We don't need students don't need to be in, in a particular geography to experience a virtual placement. One of the students we had with us in the summer actually was at home in Spain, you know, like Lisa was saying about her students being in Hong Kong. But I think that's not just about them experiencing placements or more traditional kinds of UK-based placements. I think it gives them an opportunity to, perhaps, you know, our students could do placements with you Anna, you know, and, and have that kind of much broader direct experience, internationally and more geographically spread nationally and internationally,

Anna Braunizer:

yeah, in general, I think there's definitely more international connections that are happening within our profession. I mean, I'm meeting all of you now and I met Margaret before, but now I'm more connected with OTs in New Zealand and the States and the UK and Austria, like all over. I think that's one of the things I've really liked about COVID. One of the silver linings.

Margaret Spencer:

no I just echo everything that Teresa said. I think there's a, there's an opportunity for national...international perspective. You don't have to stay within, you know, an hour of... which we have traditionally an hour, two hours off of your own university based that widens that out for people and widens up students nationally and internationally. I think you can expand all that for students given that flexibility. And there's something about delivering their opinion in a different way, which we haven't really accessed before and that opens a lot of doors for a lot of different people who might not have been able to get to services and for whatever reason, couldn't get to a clinic or a hospital. And now we connect with them, which gives us an opportunity to really demonstrate what occupational therapy can do and how we can work with people and develop a therapeutic relationship. Even though we're not in the room.

Teresa Rushton:

But I think also Margaret, you know, I think what your placement did beautifully for me was show, you know, the diversity in terms of occupational therapists too, you know, we don't have to work traditionally either and be within a hospital setting or within a clinic setting. You know, that actually it can work. For a whole range of people becoming therapists and also becoming much more digital savvy because ultimately, right now, I think it's such a high priority for the NHS and for us generally, to become more digital savvy not my idea of fun, but everybody else's it seems. and you know it's really important that we're able to upskill students, as well as ourselves in those areas.

Lisa Taylor:

And I suppose from my point of view, thinking about the sort of growth of occupational therapy, I don't what both of you have said, but these sorts of placements and virtual placements give physical capacity to growth as well with the occupational therapy professionals in being able more, to have more students on placements because placement capacity has been an issue way before, way before COVID. So our types of placements, that are virtual placements, can offer a replacement for some of those face-to-face placements that are actually quite tricky to get ahold of even without COVID being there. I agree with the exposure as well. What we found with the PEEP model is that you can target it to specific areas that perhaps students aren't being able to be exposed to either because of the geographical location of the HEI. or if there's a role-emerging area you'd want to expose the students with so you can tailor their learning to really expand their horizons about what occupational therapy or whatever profession it is that they're, they're doing a PEEP for and can be exposed to. The other interesting things as well: we're working with Scotland at the moment and the dietetics, but they're-all of the universities-their dietetic students have their placements at the same time, with the place, same placement outcomes. So it's quite possible for you to have something like the PEEP or another virtual placement that crosses across each HEI. So long as the students are all working towards the same placement outcomes at the same time. So imagine that cross-fertilization between HEI it would be absolutely brilliant. Didn't really help with the growth idea, that digital literacy, again, with my employability hat on, is high up there, on the employer requirements for graduates coming out. And yeah, the digital literacy for us has added a, you know, our trajectory of learning has just been completely, almost vertical, over the last 6 months, but being able to get the students up and running with their digital literacy through this landing has been brilliant as well.

Anna Braunizer:

thank you for sharing. Are there any last golden nuggets that you like to offer our audiences? It could be something you have relating to an earlier question or just something that I didn't ask before that you want to share, that you think's important for people to hear.

Margaret Spencer:

I think there's something about, we need to look now about service user feedback and hear from the people that we're working with and the people that we've and get some really solid evidence-base of, of the value of that for people. So we've got something that's concrete. And I also think that it's not talked about any kind of cost benefit analysis. And how much a placement normally costs in terms of, you know, people getting up at the crack of Dawn and getting up at six, o'clock traveling two hours doing the placement, traveling and repeating that for fun. And they're absolutely on the knees by week six. And so there's something about cost benefit analysis for students in terms of that travel time and that cost, emotionally and physically. And in terms of organizations, if people are doing things virtually how much money they've been in travel time and petrol and the environmental cost and something about that, the benefit analysis, I think we've not, you know. Obviously we've not had time to because literally just kind of like we're doing it, but there is something about some research around service users and the cost benefit analysis for all of us.

Teresa Rushton:

And I think I would like to urge people to get involved in virtual placements. I think there is still that kinds of fear and anxiety around them. But I think from a practice educator perspective, I think they have a great opportunity. I think all of us that were involved from the university perspective developed skills, learned to be more creative maybe, but also, as with any placements, I feel like, you know, it's that opportunity to support and shape the future of the workforce. Isn't it? And I think, you know, they say it's so important, in terms of potential for future workforce, that get involved now, be involved and, and support as much as you can.

Lisa Taylor:

And I think as well, the Royal College of Occupational Therapists. are supporting these sorts of placements as well. They were- rightly so wanting to interrogate the quality of, of this type of placement initially just to make sure that that, that learning was robust for the students but they are being now supportive of that. They've got a list, haven't they, of alt of recommended alternative placements. Delivering PEEP is on there and other ones as well that have been delivered virtually, as well. So there is a professional body support now for this type of placement. I, you know, that wasn't necessarily there six months ago cause it hadn't been tried and tested where that is there's more security, in well-planned virtual placements as well.

Anna Braunizer:

Well, thank you everyone. The last question is a new thing we're adding to the podcast, to go with our theme of do what you love. So, what is one of your favorite occupations and why do you love it?

Margaret Spencer:

Okay, I'll go. Gardening is one of my favorite occupations and so many benefits. You know, it's-personally, it's exercise, it's fresh air, it's creative, it's productive. And then I just had some nice tomato soup for my lunch. So well it's alright.

Teresa Rushton:

well, I love gardening too, but I don't want to just repeat what Margaret said. I think, well, now I'm kind of, I think and maybe that is a bit OT, my other favourite thing to do I think is probably shopping, which is probably not quite so healthy either for me or for the bank balance. but I do. I do absolutely love it. And during COVID that was internet shopping with lots of things arriving on the doorstep daily, but now I'm able to get back out to shops so I'm even happier.

Lisa Taylor:

I would say my favorite occupation is walking. Because it, you know, it doesn't cost anything. And it gets you in the fresh air and you can still stop and appreciate things. And then also when you're with the family, actually, it's the time where I find that we do the most talking and, yeah, I just think it's nice to... to get out in the fresh air and just, yeah. Exercise and make the most of the environment and just get some balance back when we are stuck in front of a computer all day, it's quite nice.

Anna Braunizer:

Thank you everyone. And I hope you have a great day.

Amelia Fletcher:

music for the, do what you love podcast was provided by purple planet on royalty free download service.