On my last post I proposed a New Years sustainable OT goal - to read through the WFOT (2018) Sustainability matters: Guiding Principles for Sustainability in Occupational Therapy Practice, Education and Scholarship paper and each month go through the reflective questions, finding relevant resources to help us improve our understanding, and ability to implement sustainable practice in our workplaces.
I’m not sure how many of you got the chance to go through the reflective questions for last month - if you missed them you can find them here: https://networks.sustainablehealthcare.org.uk/networks/occupational-therapy-susnet/reflective-questions-decemberjanuary-0
Does anyone want to share their thoughts on any of the reflections? Any resources that they found helpful! Please let us know in the comments!
Moving forward, February’s reflection is going to be on Principle 2: The role of occupational therapy in contributing towards mitigation of environmental damage due to unsustainable lifestyles. “Occupational therapy practitioners shall work with interested service users and communities to help them explore ways of participating in healthy, meaningful occupations in such a way that they contribute towards mitigation of environmental damage due to unsustainable lifestyles.”
Reflective questions for Principle 2:
For Occupational Therapy Practitioners:
- Roughly speaking, what do you think is your current carbon footprint within your practice setting?
- What could you do as an individual to help reduce the carbon footprint within your practice setting?
- How could you work with your interested clients to help them develop sustainable occupational lifestyles so as to decrease their own carbon footprints?
- How could you expand your scope of practice to include working with interested individuals and groups in the community to help them modify their occupational lifestyles in order to reduce their carbon footprints?
For Occupational Therapy Educators:
- What do you think is your carbon footprint within your educational setting?
- What could you do as an individual to help reduce the carbon footprint within your
educational establishment? - How could you help your students develop skills to assess their own occupational
lifestyles and to modify them in order to reduce their carbon footprints? - How could you help your students learn the skills necessary to work with interested service users to help them modify their occupational lifestyles in order to contribute towards mitigation of the problem of unsustainability?
For Occupational Therapy Scholars:
- How could you initiate scholarship that would contribute towards building a body of knowledge about how human occupation can be used to mitigate the problem of unsustainability and to improve human well-being?
- How could you develop scholarly priorities to investigate and generate evidence that supports occupational therapy practice to promote healthy, sustainable lifestyles through doing?
For WFOT and national associations:
- What role could you play in setting standards for practice to promote sustainable occupational therapy practice and to expand the scope of practice to include facilitation of healthy, sustainable occupational performance?
- What role could you play in facilitating research in order to build a body of knowledge about the relationships among sustainability, occupational performance, health, and well-being, and to apply this knowledge in occupational therapy practice
To help you answering some of the above questions, here are some additional resources. Let us know if you have found anything helpful for this principle!
Carbon footprint calculator
Reducing your climate footprint at work:
- The 1010 OT Checklist | PDF
- How to be an Eco Warrior in your workplace
- https://sustainablehealthcare.org.uk/planetary-emergency
- How to have a Climate Change Conversation
- Communicating uncertainty
- Youtube video - how to talk about climate change
Id love to hear from you in the comments on how you feel you could work with interested clients to help them develop sustainable occupational lifestyles so as to decrease their own carbon footprints!
This can be anything from opening up the discussion of eating less meat, to encouraging active lifestyles and driving less, growing fresh produce or shopping locally, minimalism and mindfulness, energy conservation and more.
Have you had any discussions? Success stories?
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