Transferring skills to OT

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For the past year, in conjunction with four colleagues, I have been part of a project promoting the role of occupational therapy.

Despite starting my career within a different health profession (nursing), I found myself working as a band 4 OT Assistant Practitioner in the Regional Stroke Centre – Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. This provided me with a unique perspective on the various routes into occupational therapy.

A new project about new opportunities

With the support of our management team, a project was set up to find new ways to promote the important role of occupational therapy and encourage more people to consider a future career in our amazing profession.

Our target audience has been people already working in healthcare or those looking to start a career within healthcare – aiming to increase awareness of the varied roles within OT.

Before commencing this project, we frequently found that posts were oversubscribed. Many of the applications submitted for assistant positions demonstrated very little understanding of OT – despite candidates likely having transferable skills. We felt that something needed to be done to target this. We had to ask ourselves – how could we target the right people for these jobs and increase visibility of the range of roles?

Since starting the project, we have:

• been involved in a careers fair for secondary school students
• multiple job fairs
• taken several visits to Edinburgh College.

Women into work

More recently, I attended a ‘Women into Work’ job fair with the charity Smart Works. A lot of the women visiting our stall had little to no awareness of OT, but came away feeling motivated and interested in applying for our assistant positions, which we were advertising that day.

It is difficult to assess whether the applications we have received for recent assistant posts are a result of the work from the project or not, however, it is hoped that with increased direct contact and awareness of occupational therapy roles at various events, people will be able to tailor their applications and fully demonstrate their transferable skills.