Supporting early career occupational therapists
We understand it’s important to support newly qualified occupational therapists as they move to their first role and beyond. Our commitments within and beyond this project complement national programmes of work to develop improved support for newly qualified Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) to maximise their contributions to the workforce but reinforce our profession-specific commitment to this.
We formed a project advisory group to inform, influence and drive this work.
We brought together a representative group of pre-registration learners, early career OTs, those with experience in supervising early career OTs and those who are in a dedicated preceptorship role and/or are involved in supporting the learning and development of the OT workforce (pre and post-registration). The project group took a collaborative approach with respect to our goals, priorities, and the overall direction of the project. The group has engaged in regular meetings virtually to facilitate asynchronous and ongoing collaboration and has piloted the use of a closed project group space on the FutureNHS platform.
From the focus of our project advisory group discussions, literature and lessons learned from other HEE projects we identified the inter-related ‘essentials’ for early career OTs can be summarised as follows: