Working as an occupational therapist
Supporting early career occupational therapists
Moving into your first or second role after you’ve recently qualified is exciting! But it can also come with some challenges. We’re here to support you with them.
As a member, you can contact our Professional Advisory Service for individual support. You can also join one of our Maximise Your Membership events about transitioning to practice. If there isn’t an event coming up, you can watch a recording.
Five key ways to get support in your early career:
- career preceptorship, providing structured support can help you develop confidence, skills and knowledge in your new role
- seeing possibilities and pathways and hearing what’s worked for others
- networking, sharing and learning from others and getting support from peers with similar interests
- learning and development to help you grow and think about your next career steps
- healthy and effective supervision practices.
Preceptorship
Early career preceptorship can help you develop confidence, skills and knowledge. It’s a programme of structured support that’s helpful if you’re newly qualified, been internationally recruited, are returning to practice or are moving between different settings or areas of practice.
HCPC has five broad principles of preceptorship that:
- serve as a guide
- ensure programmes meet HCPC registrants’ needs
- support improvements in the quality of the services allied health professionals provide.
You’ll find out more about these principles and information to help you access preceptorship when and where you need it on the HCPC website.
The AHP Preceptorship Standards and Framework set out what AHP preceptorship means and expands on the HCPC Principles for Preceptorship, to provide standards and a best practice implementation framework to support AHPs in England.
Understand the principles and how they affect you
To help you get to grips with how you can use these resources, you can watch a recording of a webinar we hosted with HCPC and NHSE.
Career conversations
Our career conversations vodcast (video podcasts) series is a great resource. Watching these will help you find out about other people’s experiences − see possibilities and pathways and hear what’s worked for others.
We used the Kawa Model of occupational therapy, and the analogy career journey as a river, as a lens for these career conversations.
The prompts used to guide the career conversations vodcasts have been repurposed into a Kawa-based reflection tool that prompts thinking around career development and progression within and beyond the four pillars of practice.
The Kawa approach also highlights the individual in their career journey; that river course/career development and progression journey is something that’s consistently changing and evolving with a unique course for each individual and not necessarily linear or hierarchical. This aligns with the broader ‘Growing Your AHP Career’ (AHP Careers project and narrative).
An introduction to the Kawa Model transcript (PDF, 35.16KB)
A reflection tool based on the Kawa Model (PDF, 388.49KB)
Connect with peers
We know that our members find networking especially valuable when they’re at a transition point in their career. It helps to share and learn from others and seek support from peers with similar interests.
In our inclusive communities you’ll find a place to share, learn and network based on your region, area of practice and professional interests. You can connect and network with others across career levels and with diverse experiences and access learning and development opportunities.
Continuing Professional Development (CPD)
As well as networking, there are many ways we can help you with your professional learning and development. You’ll find a range of resources to support your continuing professional development.
This includes our Career Development Framework and useful resources to help you think about your next career steps and/or to develop within your current role. Using our CPD portfolio you can record and keep track of your CPD in one place.
Supervision
Supervision, put simply, is a professional relationship and activity which ensures good standards of practice and encourages development. It gives you a way of professional learning and development that helps you to reflect on and develop your knowledge, skills and competence through agreed and regular support with another professional.
Our supervision guide helps practitioners and managers establish healthy and effective supervision practices that will meet the quality standards and strategy documents across the UK.
We’ve used HCPC’s 10 key characteristics of effective supervision in our Supervision readiness toolkit to help you evaluate your experience as a supervisee. You can use the checklist to reflect, plan and guide your professional conversations to help you get the most out of your supervision.