Featured Articles

Crafting a Comprehensive Teaching Philosophy for Occupational Therapy Educators

Elise Henry, MS, MPH, OTR/L

Aspiring occupational therapy educators face the challenge of articulating a teaching philosophy (also known as a teaching statement) that reflects their commitment to fostering student success and contributing to the profession's advancement. Whether pursuing professor, adjunct, or lecturer positions, a well-crafted teaching philosophy is a roadmap for educators to convey their beliefs, methods, and objectives. This article maps the road to developing a professional teaching philosophy specific to occupational therapy programs.

Read the full article on the New York State Occupational Therapy Association (NYSOTA) website

Strategies to Enhance Professional Skills in the Fieldwork Experience

by Lisa Davis MA, OTR

Taking on a fieldwork student is a huge responsibility.  IT is where the student occupational therapist begins to practice what they learned in the classroom setting.  You, as their supervisor provides the gift of guiding them to the finish line toward graduation.  Generally, students entering their fieldwork experience will be nervous and awkward, yet eager to applying their new skills to practice range of motion, transfer training, evaluations and treatment modalities on “real” clients.  And yet, while all of this is going on you have the added responsibility of instilling professional skills as part of the learning experience. 

By providing insight into these professional behavior, you will be sharing an important skills which will lead to success in their careers. These skills include professional integrity, therapeutic relationships, documentation and financial matters, service delivery, professional competence, communication and professional civility , which all fall under the standards of conduct of our Professional Ethics.  Along with those, are behaviors such as reliability, cooperation, organization, empathy, self awareness, emotional intelligence and appearance. And these are just the beginning. 

Strategies For Initiating Your Fieldwork Student

Day 1:   Welcome the student.  At the start of the fieldwork experience it is best to greet your student with a warm and genuine happy welcome.  Provide the student with an area for their personal beongs, a place to sit, introduction to the staff  and orientation to the facility.

Day 2:  On day 2, the student can be assigned to follow a staff member to get their bearings, understand the facility and what the expections will be of them in the setting. 

Day 3 & 4:  The supervisor can begin to participate in client treatment.  Feedback and a dialogue should be provided after interactions. 

Day 5:  Meet with the student in a quiet place for feedback and encouragement. At this time you can provide them with the Professional Skills Competency Checklist.  Both you and the student should complete the Checklist for discussion.

Day 8:  Review the self assessment and compare your results with that of the student.  Discuss the comparisons. 

Next steps:

Schedule regular ongoing check-ins.

Conduct an exit interview at the end of the fieldwork experience.

 If you have more than one student you can schedule lunch and learn sessions.  During these sessions students can role play a session of client/therapist demonstrating both professional and unprofessional behaviors, and later discuss their impressions. 

By incorporating both reflective observation strategies and active experimentation strategies in the clinic, the students will be clear about professional expectation, ultimately helping bridge the gap between theory and practice.