Our first blog of 2020 comes courtesy of Sue Mesa, Course Lead for MSc Occupational Therapy.
The end of the year and the beginning of the new year is a busy time on the MSc Occupational Therapy programme, with cohorts of students starting and competing their programmes. In November we celebrated our first cohort of MSc OT students graduating from the programme at the York Minster. All of this cohort are now working as Occupational Therapists in lots of different settings and it was fantastic to hear how they were getting on. Soon we will be trying to enlist some of this group as new practice educators ?
Above: Graduating MSc Occupational Therapy Students of 2019
This week we will be welcoming our 2020 cohort of MSc students to York St John and on behalf of all the OT team I would like to offer a very warm welcome to them all. We have students joining us with a wide range of clinical and academic experiences and it’s often this diversity that creates great learning opportunities for everyone. With this in mind as a staff team, we will be encouraging them all to be confident to share their skills and experiences and support each other in learning. The course is intensive and challenging, but we also try to have some fun in the process.
Our 2019 cohort are half way through their programme now and I’m sure will be wondering where that first year has disappeared to! They are going out onto their role emerging placements and these are in a wide range of settings with lots of different groups/communities, including people experiencing domestic violence, a veterans charity, a youth homelessness project, primary and secondary schools, care farms and horticulture projects and a charity for people with dementia. We are very much looking forward to supporting these placements and hearing all their innovative ideas about what Occupational Therapy could offer within these services.
Our 2018 cohort finished their final placement just before Christmas and it was lovely to have them back in university for placement debrief where they reflected on their learning over cups of tea and chocolate. This debrief really highlighted they are all now ready to be qualified Occupational Therapists. They will be presenting their research projects at the end of January in a student conference, and this will be their final academic assessment on the programme. We will be encouraging the 2019 cohort and the third year BSc students to come along and watch these presentations too. It is always a bit sad to say goodbye to students we have worked so closely with, but this is mixed with being proud of their achievements and excited for them for their future careers.
Here’s to 2020!