A meeting of the Sheffield
Occupational Therapy Clinical Academic (SOTCA) network was held on 26th
January 2017. The network was started by Laura Di Bona and aims
to provide peer support, form collaborations and consider service developments.
Occupational therapists based in Sheffield Health and Social
Care NHS Foundation Trust, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Sheffield
Children’s Hospital, Rotherham Housing Services, University of Sheffield, and
Sheffield Hallam University attended. All were interested in or to pursue
research, and ways to combine research with clinical practice. There was a
great variety of clinical and research experience in the room with people at
different stages of their careers. Some had done research MSc modules, some
MSCs, some were studying for PhDs, and some had submitted applications to the
NIHR clinical academic pathway doctoral fellowship programme. Sam Armitage
(Occupational Therapist, Sheffield Children’s Hospital), Laura Di Bona
(University of Sheffield & Sheffield Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust)
and Professor Gail Mountain (Professor, University of Bradford) all gave
informal presentations about their research journeys. It seemed that carving
out a clinical academic career required resilience, commitment and flexibility,
and that there wasn’t one clear, established ‘pathway’ to follow, the
presenters had all created and responded to opportunities. Everyone
agreed to meet again, perhaps with presentations - possibly related to Occupational Therapy
and assistive technology research, or
the MSc in Clinical Research – to be confirmed.
Any occupational therapists, or
occupational therapy students interested in doing research, service evaluation/development are
welcome! You can come for general interest and/or use the group for support,
for example project ideas, funding applications, conference or publication
submissions...
The next meeting is planned for Thursday 27th April 5-7pm at the
Assessment and Rehab Centre (ARC) in
Nether Edge although this will be confirmed nearer the time.
SOTCA has a new website at: http://www.catch.org.uk/current-project/sotca/ . If you are interested, please log on to it and register your
details with our new Mailchimp account so you can be sure to hear about future
work of the group. Also, please follow us on twitter
Written by Becky Field
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