What does “Participation Changes Everything” mean for us as occupational therapists?
As we look ahead to Occupational Therapy Week in November, we’ve been reflecting on this year’s theme from the Royal College of Occupational Therapists: Participation Changes Everything.
For the Breakthrough OT Network, it has prompted us to think about participation from another perspective — how do we participate in, and strengthen, our own profession?
In this reflection, Holly Luxton, Manager of the Breakthrough OT Network, explores these questions, drawing on conversations with Victoria McDermott, Managing Director of Breakthrough and an experienced clinical OT, about the value of clinical experience, connection and learning from each other.
Every year, Occupational Therapy Week gives us a chance to stop and think about what it is that makes our profession so special.
This year’s theme from the Royal College of Occupational Therapists is Participation Changes Everything, and I’ve found myself thinking about that in two ways.
The first is the obvious one, although perhaps “obvious” isn’t quite the right word. As OTs, we know how much it matters to be able to take part in the things that give our lives meaning. Work, family life, hobbies, relationships, education, getting out and about, being part of a community. The things that make someone them.
We also know that participation can look completely different from one person to the next. That’s part of what makes occupational therapy so rewarding, and sometimes so challenging.
But working with OTs through the Breakthrough OT Network has made me think more and more about another kind of participation: how we participate in our own profession.
How often do we get the chance to sit down with another OT and talk honestly about a difficult case? To hear how someone else approached something, to share something that didn’t work as expected, or to draw on the experience of someone who has been doing this for twenty, thirty or more years?
There is an enormous amount of clinical knowledge sitting within our profession. Much of it has been built through years of experience rather than written down in a textbook.
Breakthrough’s Managing Director, Victoria McDermott, and I talk about this quite a lot.
Having worked clinically herself for many years, she often talks about how much of the learning that stays with you comes from those conversations with colleagues, the informal ones, the challenging ones, and sometimes just the reassurance of discovering that another experienced OT has faced exactly the same problem.
And I think that’s one of the things we want the Breakthrough OT Network to create more of.
Not so much a place where we pretend to have all the answers, but a place where OTs can ask questions, share their experience and learn from one another.
Because I’m not sure we always make enough of the expertise that already exists within our profession.
Quite rightly, we talk a lot about developing the next generation of OTs. But we also need to create opportunities for experienced clinicians to pass on what they have learned, and for those with less experience to ask the questions that help them grow.
For me, that is one of the most exciting things about the Network.
Participation changes everything for the people we support. But connection and participation within our profession can change things for OTs too.
So this Occupational Therapy Week, I’ll be celebrating the profession I’ve been lucky enough to be part of, and the people within it. The clinicians who keep asking questions, the ones who share what they know, the ones who are still learning after years of practice, and the ones just starting out, bringing new ideas and perspectives with them.
There is so much we can learn from each other, and I think we’re better occupational therapists when we do.
Holly Luxton
Manager, Breakthrough OT Network