Video transcript
I’m Kayleigh Bowler, I’m an Occupational Therapy Apprentice and I work for the Kent Community Equipment Service.
What is occupational therapy?
So, occupational therapy generally, people work with those with physical disability or learning difficulties or mental health problems, and it’s about helping them to do the occupations that are meaningful to them. So, they might have trouble doing activities around the house, such as bathing, showering, getting in and out of bed, or on and off the toilet, or even just hobbies like gardening. And it’s about looking at the personal factors of that person and what they can do physically, the environment that might be creating a barrier to them, and also the occupation itself, so if there’s anything that we can modify to help them to be able to participate in their activities, because there’s a lot of evidence out there that being able to participate in the occupations that are meaningful to you will improve your quality of life and your wellbeing.
How did you become interested in occupational therapy?
I’d never actually even heard of occupational therapy until I finished my previous degree and started work experience. So, I started a job as a support worker for people with learning disabilities and mental health problems in hospital. And I was working with them daily and I noticed that when they started going to the activities, that were planned by the occupational therapy team, there was a massive change in their behaviour. Their behaviour really improved and you could just tell that they were a lot happier and they were learning new skills, such as budgeting and maybe cooking a meal for the first time ever, and I just thought wow, they’ve just changed so much in that space of time. And I think that was when I realised that occupational therapy was something that I wanted to do because in that hospital if they hadn’t have had that occupational therapy input it would’ve been a much different environment for them.
How do you become an occupational therapist?
There are different ways to become an occupational therapist. You can go to university straight from college and do the degree that way or you can do the course that I’m doing at the moment, which is an apprenticeship, and that’s done through your employer. It’s still the bachelor’s degree and the way that the apprenticeship works is you to the university one day a week and you have lecturers and seminars. There’s lots of group work and case study work where you think about a case study and apply the theory that you’ve learnt to them. They also have service users that attend the university, so you can practice your therapeutic skills on them and also get feedback. And then the other part of the week, when you’re not at university, you’re just in your normal workplace and the way it works is really effective because you can apply the learning that you’ve done that week to your day-to-day job. There are also practice placements, so the healthcare professions council require you to complete a thousand hours of practice before you qualify, so there are three placements across the course. They’re eight to 10 weeks at a time, your employer lets you off for those eight to 10 weeks to go work in a different setting, so you might be working in mental health, or acute hospital setting, or in the community. And that just gives you more of a rounded idea of how an occupational therapist can do different things in different settings.
What is your favourite part of your job?
I think occupational therapy as a career is very supported. We’ve got a team of four of us that I see every day when I’m at work, so even when we’ve got queries, we sort of bounce off each other to decide what it is, what the best answer would be.
My favourite part of the job, of the day job when I’m working in the office, would be when we’ve come to a really good solution for a client, so a therapist has emailed in and asked us what we think about a certain piece of equipment and then they come back to us sort of two or three weeks later when they’ve been able to review that piece of equipment with the client and they say thank you so much, it really worked and they’re now able to sit in their chair rather than stay in bed all day. So that’s an indirect way of helping someone. One case I had, a lady couldn’t get out into her garden and because she didn’t go out very much, that was her one piece of, sort of, helping her wellbeing, so she couldn’t get out there at all, so we put some steps in, so I spoke to the council and asked them to put some steps in for her and she sent me a text to say that you know she’d been able to get out into her garden for the first time in three years and that was just really nice to obviously be able to help her with that.
What are your career aspirations?
Occupational therapy as a career is so diverse you can really work in any setting, with any group of clients. I really want sort of when I’ve graduated probably to get a bit of experience with a range of clients so I can decide where my skills best lie just to you know meet their needs. So, I’d like to get some experience in paediatrics with maybe neurorehabilitation for people who have had strokes and other conditions but you can really work anywhere and that’s why occupational therapy is such a good career choice. Where I’ve learnt so much about equipment, that’s also a passion of mine to see how that can, that equipment can really help someone to become independent.
Would you recommend occupational therapy as a career?
If you want a career where you’re gonna be helping people or if you love people and you wanna make a difference to their lives, whether it’s in a small way or a large way, then it’s definitely a career you should go into and it’s something that you’re never gonna struggle to get a job in it, for one thing, which is always good, but also, you know, you can work in a different setting all the time, so if you wanna move around then you’ve got a lot of diversity there as well.
