Students and OT Week

Occupational Therapy week is a fantastic opportunity to raise the awareness of your profession at university as well as having some fun

Here are some thoughts on what you can do during OT Week:

• download the OT Week Student Checklist to help plan your involvement in this year’s OT Week 
• promote Occupational Therapy Week during Fresher Week and get new first year students involved
• form an OT Week planning committee to arrange events. Include tutors if possible
• decide what resources you need for OT Week and how and where you are going to store the resources safely
• order promotional materials from the College in advance of your events by emailing Jim.Waters@cot.co.uk
• bookmark the OT Week pages on this website 
• deliver an OT presentation to other students
• run competitions that involve other students and also spread the word about occupational therapy e.g. what would you do with this piece of equipment or pose problems such as, how can you change a duvet cover if you only have one hand?
• ensure there is an occupational therapy focus in your careers department, libraries and public foyer during the week of the 7-13 November
• consider ways to promote occupational therapy within your VLRC, university intranet and discussion forums
• use the promotional films about occupational therapy on www.youtube.com/baotcot  
• make social media work for you by writing a blog about occupational therapy and using Facebook and Twitter
• find out how you can work with your practice placement colleagues to promote occupational therapy during this week

Organise an occupational therapy open day

demonstrating your teaching resources such as the ADL kitchen – target different teaching faculty department such as other healthcare courses, social science and business studies to get these students to think about the needs of people with reduced abilities within their studies.

Plan some long term design assignments

Work with other faculty departments such as fashion and design or mechanical engineering. Invite fashion design students to create clothes for people in wheelchairs, or ask mechanical engineers to design some equipment to meet the needs of a particular disability. Remind these students they can use the occupational therapy students as advisors.
 
Download OT Week Student Checklist
Don’t forget to record the activities you have undertaken. It will provide useful information for your CV.