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College of Occupational Therapists 37th Annual Conference, Glasgow SECC

Ben Whittaker
Ben Whittaker • 17 August 2013

College of Occupational Therapists 37th Annual Conference, Glasgow SECC

These reflections on the COT Annual Conference in Glasgow have been delayed by me having had to take some unexpected time off work over the summer.  However, two months on I’m still left with the good feelings of a great few days in Glasgow.   It’s always a pleasure to meet so many occupational therapists from far and wide doing such good work.  And as each annual conference goes by, more and more people are discussing the importance of sustainable healthcare and realising how integral our profession is to this. 

The ‘magnificent promise’ of Michael Iwama’s opening plenary (which you can watch here) set the scene well: “To enable people from all streams of life, to engage and participate in valued activities and processes of daily living.”  He questioned whether occupational therapy practice is relevant and responsive to the social, economic, environmental and technological needs of our communities, speaking strongly about how practice is often bound by the prevalent outlook of the bio-medical model in many settings.  We must move from the reactive to the proactive.  

Iwama describes public health as the new challenge for our profession and sees the UK as leading the way in this.   He says we need to examine our ‘me, me, me’ behaviours as over-consumption is both damaging our wellbeing and leading to global environmental change, impacting on how the river flows in his Kawa model.  Iwama sees occupational therapy’s new path as familiar but new and questioned whether we dare walk down it. 

Following this, I headed straight into the seminar on the WFOT position statement on environmental sustainability, which Samantha Shann and I co-facilitated (our slides are here)There weren’t as many people as we’d hoped as we discovered that we were clashing with another couple of keynote addresses.  Those there were keen to explore practical suggestions of how sustainability can be incorporated into the workplace and into education.  We discussed the WFOT minimum standards for education and what the next WFOT document around sustainability may be. 

In the specialist section Mental Health conference, Sue Griffiths’ seminar on ‘Creating Sustainable Occupations’ provided lots of insight into factors which influence whether people independently continue creative occupations from groups in their own personal life.  She prompted us to consider different aspects of this, such as: whether people find creative activities meaningful, how we encourage the development of people’s internal motivation for occupations and what occupational therapists may bring to the area of arts and health.  My own experience of working with the STEPPS programme for people with Borderline Personality Disorder is that it can help to open up a creative side which some had previously been unaware of and which can then play a key part in them being able to self-sooth and distract from emotionally intense episodes. 

The conference featured lots of posters that I was keen to see but unfortunately some of them had been withdrawn prior to the conference.  Here are two that the authors have kindly shared on our resources page:  Empowering Communities: An OT model to enable cohesive, sustainable Community Development by Michelle Bruwer, Jo Pickles and Imogen Gordon and The Garden Project: Overcoming occupational deprivation through gardening by Dawn Sherriff and Lynda English. 

The poster that I displayed, Utilising the 'NHS Route Map for Sustainable Health’ in Occupational Therapy, reaffirmed for me what I already knew: that occupational therapists are leading on sustainable healthcare practice.   Discussing the poster throughout the conference, people generally seemed surprised that building, energy use and travel only make up 35% of the NHS carbon footprint with the other 65% being procurement of goods and services.  In order to meet the NHS target of an 80% reduction by 2050 we have to really rethink how we provide healthcare in this country. 

The Route Map describes its vision for ‘Models of Care’ as: “Where health is less a medical matter and more about us having control over our own well-being”.  In other words, occupational therapy is already using sustainable models of healthcare which need to be embedded by 2050.  Also Michael Iwama’s vision of occupational therapy as leaders in public health chimes with the Route Map’s vision for ‘Societal Behaviour’ of: “A compassionate society living in a high quality environment with reduced health inequalities”. 

It seems to me that whilst there was talk at the conference about challenges to our professional identity, how we may be questioning our role and having to justify our work in new ways to commissioners, that this is adapting our practice to a health care system which is unsustainable and needs to change.  Whereas, if we can focus on models of sustainable healthcare and effectively communicate our role within them we can show leadership on the new health systems which need develop over the next couple of generations.  

The Elizabeth Casson memorial lecture was a very good, inspiring address from Elaine Hunter (you can watch it here) about how all occupational therapists can become leaders in our profession and shape occupational therapy practice, but how we can only do this by working alongside eachother and collaborating.  Hunter shared her leadership journey and gave pointers to make leadership more accessible to others, through sharing a vision, implementing evidence based practice and building relationships.  Hunter says we should retain the best of our profession, implement what we know works well and not be afraid to let go of what doesn’t, stating “we can adapt and change how and where we practice but the why remains the same.”

On the last morning, I presented a paper about NHS Forest.  When I first submitted this abstract I thought I would concentrate on the work of occupational therapists in Outer Space projects, but since then I’d been put in touch with David Johnston and Mary Colvin and focused on the excellent Ninewells greenspace project (you can find our slides here).  I spoke about how easy it was to get service users at work to get involved in NHS Forest by planting two trees at 2pm on NHS Sustainability Day, which formed part of our gardening and photography groups.  During the presentation I became choked and had to take my time when reading out David’s email describing the story of a service user called Rob, which we’ll hopefully be able to put up as an OT Susnet blog soon.  It was also extremely powerful hearing a member of the audience talk about the power of horticulture after the presentation. 

This paper was part of a wider session which included a workshop from Vicky Bolton on willow weaving.  She described how activities on her secure ward have changed considerably with the onset of technology.  Although occupational therapists have been very good at incorporating these into our practice she’s seen the beginnings of a return to more traditional activities.  Bolton described derogatory comments about occupational therapists and basket weaving both professionally and personally but gave an impassioned argument about why willow weaving is a great occupation to use with service users.  On an all-male ward she has never had any negative comments or moaning from people when willow weaving and has seen service users experiencing flow whilst doing the activity.  Seeing how quickly everyone in the room got up onto their feet and interacted was great and made me think how good this could be at breaking down any barriers between service users.  I was sold!

In the final slot of the final day I went to a College led session about research.  There are now so many ways of undertaking and funding research, e.g. as part of a clinical academic training pathway, through publications or the more traditional PhD route.  If you’re interested in exploring research then do contact Elizabeth White at the COT.  I had a long discussion with her about possible research during the conference and she was very helpful indeed.

As much as I enjoyed the scenic train ride to and from Glasgow I’m looking forward to walking to the Brighton Centre when the COT conference comes back to my home town next year.   Before then, there will be more exploration of all things sustainable healthcare at the CleanMed Europe conference in Oxford next month.  Hopefully see you there! 

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