The Alchemy of Good Interventions: Developing a Creative Health Quality Framework 

Occupational Therapy has a long history of using creative and cultural activities as part of diagnosis, treatment and recovery in a variety of settings. Recent years have seen interest in how cultural activities can improve health and wellbeing grow with bodies such as The World Health Organisation, Arts Council England, The Baring Foundation, Museums Association and NHS England all putting out reports and policies to support this work. 

Our unique perspective and use of creative activities makes the profession well placed to lead and deliver culture for wellbeing programmes – from hospitals to community settings. But how do we measure success and what does a “good” creative intervention look like?  

This #OTalk will be hosted by Jemma Channing (@JemChanOT), an Occupational Therapist working in a museum, in partnership with the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance (CHWAlliance) and Jane Willis (@janecwillis) who are currently developing a Creative Health Quality Framework.

The Creative Health Quality Framework aims to be an overarching quality framework which both individuals and organisations can use to guide them in deciding what quality looks like to them – you can read more about the framework and its development here: https://www.culturehealthandwellbeing.org.uk/creative-health-quality-framework

1. Have you ever partnered with a gallery, museum or other culture organization as part of your OT practice?
2. The alchemy of a ‘good’ creative OT project…What does this look like to you? 
3. What might good look like to your patients and other staff, including managers?
4. How would a Creative Health Quality Framework support your practice? 
5. How might OT core values translate into a Creative Health Quality Framework?  
6. Partnership working underpins almost all good creative health programmes: what makes a meaningful partnership?

POST CHAT

Host: Jemma Channing @JemChanOT and Jane Willis @janecwillis

Support on OTalk account: Carolina Cordero @colourful_ot

Evidence your CPD. If you joined in this chat you can download the below transcript as evidence for your CPD, but remember the HCPC are interested in what you have learnt.  So why not complete one of our reflection logs to evidence your learning?

HCPC Standards for CPD.

• Maintain a continuous, up-to-date and accurate record of their CPD activities.
• Demonstrate that their CPD activities are a mixture of learning activities relevant to current or future practice.
• Seek to ensure that their CPD has contributed to the quality of their practice and service delivery.
• Seek to ensure that their CPD benefits the service user.

This week Keir Harding @Keirwales will be hosting here is what he has to say………

The Casson Memorial lecture takes place every year and it one of the calendar events in the world of occupational therapy. Elizabeth Casson was the first woman to be awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of Bristol in 1929. Dr Casson specialised in psychiatry and introduced occupational therapy to England, setting up the first school of occupational therapy in Bristol in 1930.  To commemorate the founding of occupational therapy in the UK, each year the RCOT ask someone who has “made or is making a significant contribution to developing our profession” to deliver a lecture.   Via a selection process which has generated a result that even Baltic dictatorships find unbelievable, this year it’s being delivered by me.  

While the lecture is an opportunity to talk about whatever I want, I’m mindful that it is also there to benefit the profession in some way.  While I can be quite vocal on social media and other spheres, I’m conscious that I’m probably associated with mental health in general and a narrow area of mental health in particular.   

I’d like you to help me craft something that speaks to the whole profession.  Something that validates and challenges, something that questions and inspires, something that critiques but offers hope.  Now I have some ideas based on the topics I’m always banging on about but I’m particularly interested in your thoughts on: 

I find it difficult to describe why I’m doing this lecture but objectively its probably because I’m quite vocal about the profession, about working with people who tend to get excluded and about focusing on areas/occupations we aren’t normally associated with.  Just to get a rough idea of the kind of things I get up to before the #OTalk you might be interested in having a look at: 

Me in the BJOT

Me in the Lancet here, here and here

Me saying how ace OT is here and here

Me flouncing around on the BBC here

Hope to see you Tuesday, 

Keir

POST CHAT

Host: Keir Harding @Keirwales

Support on OTalk account: Ruth Hawley @Ruth_Hawley

Evidence your CPD. If you joined in this chat you can download the below transcript as evidence for your CPD, but remember the HCPC are interested in what you have learnt.  So why not complete one of our reflection logs to evidence your learning?

HCPC Standards for CPD.

• Maintain a continuous, up-to-date and accurate record of their CPD activities.
• Demonstrate that their CPD activities are a mixture of learning activities relevant to current or future practice.
• Seek to ensure that their CPD has contributed to the quality of their practice and service delivery.
• Seek to ensure that their CPD benefits the service user.

Chat will be hosted by @Lauramains0, @rebeccaharkin97 with @preston_jenny on the #OTalk account.

During many of our #OTalk Research discussions we have talked about the challenges incorporating research into practice and how this is often reserved for those within a research role.  What if we developed research placements?  What might that look like?  Would students be interested?  How will they meet their learning outcomes if they are focussing on research?

This week we will hear from two final year occupational therapy pre-registration Masters students undertaking a research placement.  The placement has been developed around evaluation of a 9 year clinical programme supporting young people living with neurological conditions as they transition from Child Health into Adult Services.  

The students are participating in a placement that enables them to develop clinical skills within this area while contributing to their understanding of the role of the occupational therapist within this programme.  They have participated within two external events that have examined the policy context of Transitions, further developing their knowledge of the wider strategic importance of this work.  Finally they are involved in coding routine clinical data within the ICF Framework (WHO) in an attempt to illustrate the breadth and depth of occupational therapy interventions.

As part of the placement they have gained experience in the design and development of the methodology; developed a data collection tool; piloted the evaluation framework; and developed a questionnaire for the young people who have accessed the service.  The aim is to write up this work for publication led by the Practice Educator and with the students cited as co-authors.  Not bad for a 10 week placement!

Laura and Rebecca will share some of their thoughts and experiences through discussion of the following questions:

1. What are your experiences of engaging in a research placement?

2. What were the key take aways from the experience?

3. What advice do you have for those thinking about this option?

4. How can we expand the capacity and capability of research placements?

5. Should we have research placements, or should this be an integral part of every practice based learning experience?

References

International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health: ICF. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2001.

POST CHAT

Host: @LauramainsO, @rebeccaharkin97

Support on OTalk account: @preston_jenny

Evidence your CPD. If you joined in this chat you can download the below transcript as evidence for your CPD, but remember the HCPC are interested in what you have learnt.  So why not complete one of our reflection logs to evidence your learning?

HCPC Standards for CPD.

• Maintain a continuous, up-to-date and accurate record of their CPD activities.
• Demonstrate that their CPD activities are a mixture of learning activities relevant to current or future practice.
• Seek to ensure that their CPD has contributed to the quality of their practice and service delivery.
• Seek to ensure that their CPD benefits the service user.
• Upon request, present a written profile (which must be their own work and supported by evidence) explaining how they have met the Standards for CPD.

Hosted by Anita Volkert (@AnitavAHP) and Katrina Bannigan (@KatrinaBannigan) from Glasgow Caledonian University (@GcuOcc)

We are grateful to #OTalk for providing us with this opportunity to discuss a campaign that we have started called ‘Everyone needs a PAL’. PAL stands for Peer Assisted Learning, the name for the model of placement that involves having two or more students with one practice educator (Beveridge and Pentland, 2020). Our campaign is for occupational therapy, and the other allied health professions, to make it standard practice to have a minimum of two students involved in every placement. Our reasons for this are:

• New models of practice-based learning have been adopted and piloted but they have not solved the underlying capacity issue.
• The overarching challenge of scale remains because many of the new practice-based learning models operate on a one to one model, that is, one learner with one practice educator (Beveridge & Pentland, 2020). Unfortunately, this is unsustainable in the long term (Markowski et al., 2021).
• Modelling suggests that the need for placements is only going to increase over the next 10 to 30 years.
• Peer assisted learning is an approach that works (Markowski et al., 2021; Beveridge & Pentland, 2020).
• Supervising a peer assisted learning placement can actually feel like less work than supervising one student (Sevenhuysen et al., 2015).
• We need this bold move—essentially, a simple solution—so that we can divert the energy we put into finding placements into more productive activities, such as innovation and growth.

We hope that this campaign can help to bring this about. In #OTalk we are going to pose the following questions which we hope will provide a useful starting point for discussion:

• Have you had experience of peer assisted learning placements?
• Why do you think we need a campaign to move to peer assisted learning placements as standard practice?
• Do you want to play a part increasing facilitating peer assisted learning placements?
• What do you need to facilitate you to move to supervising peer assisted learning placements?
• How can we move campaign forward across the profession as whole and the wider AHP family?

References

• Beveridge J and Pentland D (2020) A mapping review of models of practice education in allied health and social care professions. British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 83(8): 488–513.
• Markowski M, Bower H, Essex R, et al. (2021). Peer learning and collaborative placement models in health care: a systematic review and qualitative synthesis of the literature. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 30(11–12): 1519–1541.
• Sevenhuysen S, Farlie MK, Keating JL, et al. (2015) Physiotherapy students and clinical educators perceive several ways in which incorporating peer-assisted learning could improve clinical placements: A qualitative study. Journal of Physiotherapy 61(2): 87–92.
• Volkert A, Bannigan K. The time is now to upscale all placements to a minimum of two students. British Journal of Occupational Therapy. 2022;85(7):475-476. doi:10.1177/03080226221097300

Blog posts

• If we keep doing what we’ve always done, we won’t increase placement numbers https://gcuocc.wordpress.com/2022/08/03/if-we-keep-doing-what-weve-always-done-we-wont-increase-placement-numbers/ 
• Researchers call on NHS to back new 2-1 student placements to end crisis Available at https://gcuocc.wordpress.com/2022/07/27/researchers-call-on-nhs-to-back-new-2-1-student-placements-to-end-crisis/

POST CHAT

Host:  Anita Volkert @AnitavAHP and Katrina Bannigan @KatrinaBannigan

Support on OTalk Account: @Ruth_Hawley

Evidence your CPD. If you joined in this chat you can download the below transcript as evidence for your CPD, but remember the HCPC are interested in what you have learnt.  So why not complete one of our reflection logs to evidence your learning?

HCPC Standards for CPD.

• Maintain a continuous, up-to-date and accurate record of their CPD activities.
• Demonstrate that their CPD activities are a mixture of learning activities relevant to current or future practice.
• Seek to ensure that their CPD has contributed to the quality of their practice and service delivery.
• Seek to ensure that their CPD benefits the service user.
• Upon request, present a written profile (which must be their own work and supported by evidence) explaining how they have met the Standards for CPD.