Researcher Becky Field gives presentation at Royal College of Occupational Therapy Conference 2017 and wins the 2017 Early Researcher award!

I recently gave an oral presentation at this year’s Royal College of Occupational Therapy conference, which took place in Birmingham June 2017.

My talk was called “Identifying influences on take up of a community occupational therapy intervention for people with dementia and their family carers”.

Sheffield Occupational Therapy Clinical Academics Meeting

Last week a number of occupational therapists from South Yorkshire gathered together for a “Mock Royal College of Occupational Therapists Annual Conference” #COT2017.

SOTCA mock Royal College of Occupational Therapy conference tomorrow (Wed 7th June)

Next meeting: "mock COT conference"

Speakers:

We bring you the premier of four presentations that were successfully selected for this year's College of Occupational Therapy Annual Conference. You get the chance to hear them before the rest of the country (i.e. we're testing them out on you, please let us know what you think)!

Sheffield Occupational Therapy Clinical Academic (SOTCA) network meeting

A meeting of the Sheffield Occupational Therapy Clinical Academic (SOTCA) network was held on 26^th April 2017 at the Assessment and Rehab Centre, Nether Edge, Sheffield.

 

Sheffield Occupational Therapy Clinical Academic (SOTCA) network meeting

A meeting of the Sheffield Occupational Therapy Clinical Academic (SOTCA) network was held on 26^th 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 27^th 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

26th Alzheimer Europe Conference: Becky Field (Researcher, PhD student and Occupational Therapist) attends and gives presentation

Becky & Jacki

I attended the 26^th Alzheimer Europe Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark (31 October–2 November 2016) http://www.alzheimer-europe.org/Conferences/2016-Copenhagen

The theme of the conference was “excellence in dementia research and care”. It was great to learn about research and service developments across Europe.

Personal highlights from the conference were

-   Hearing from people living with dementia and their caregivers, reminding us what an important contribution they can and do make to research and services.  

- Learning about the work going on in Scotland to develop and deliver post diagnostic support services; great to hear about how it happens, and that post diagnostic support is offered to everyone with a diagnosis of dementia; also to hear about Allied Health Professional roles in dementia services.

http://Alzscot.org                    http://alzscot.org/talking-dementia

The presentation I gave was called ‘Psychosocial Interventions: identifying influences on take up’. This was based on interviews carried out with people living with dementia and their family carers about experiences of participating in a community occupational therapy intervention (as part of the ‘Valuing Active Life in Dementia (VALID)’ research study). As part of my PhD research I am trying to identify influences on why people may or may not accept offers of psychosocial interventions and feel ready to engage in them. This is because government policy now recommends post-diagnostic support and psychosocial interventions, and there is a growing evidence to support the benefits of these interventions. Yet, there is little research about what may help or prevent people from engaging in such interventions to inform development of post diagnostic services.  I hope my doctoral research can contribute to these developments.

As part of the conference I also attended the Interdem Academy Master class: ‘Involving people with dementia as advisors to your research’. http://interdem.org/?page_id=4636

Funder: National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Programme Grants for Applied Research: Grant number: RP-PG 0610-10108

The ‘Valuing Active Life in Dementia’ is evaluating the effectiveness of a community occupational therapy intervention for people with mild to moderate dementia living in the community and their family carers. If you would like more information about this study please see https://www.ucl.ac.uk/valid

If you would like more information about my doctoral research please do get in touch b.field@sheffield.ac.uk

Sheffield Occupational Therapy Clinical Academic Network (SOTCA): First open meeting a huge success!

Laura Di Bona

A group of occupational therapists based in and around Sheffield have developed a network to advance occupational therapy knowledge and practice. The network, SOTCA, aims to improve outcomes and experiences for service users of a diverse range of occupational therapy services across the region. SOTCA hopes to achieve this through forming cross-organisational collaborations and providing peer support to occupational therapists trying to improve practice or develop a clinical academic career. It is open to any occupational therapist who shares our aims, whether you are a student, newly qualified, highly experienced, retired or anything in between.

SOTCA’s first open meeting was held on 13^th October 2016 and attended by seventeen occupational therapists from seven organisations. It was hosted by Colette Fegan at Sheffield Hallam University who treated us to a tour of their innovative teaching facilities. The meeting was then used for networking, forming collaborations and peer support. The amount of knowledge and enthusiasm in the room was amazing, so we certainly have plenty to offer each other. The atmosphere was energising, optimistic and conversation flowed long after the meeting was due to finish! Old friends caught up and new friendships were formed. Future goals of the group were set and these include developing collaborations and links (especially between practice and research), learning from each other and improving practice.

The next meeting will be in January 2017. If you are an occupational therapist who would like to join our network, please contact Laura Di Bona (l.dibona@sheffield.ac.uk).

At the January meeting we plan to share some of our clinical academic / occupational therapy research experiences and journeys, do get in touch with Laura if you would like to share.

Some recommendations from the meeting:

• Contact Health, Advice and Information (CHAIN) Network. CHAIN is a successful online mutual support network of people working in health and social care. Sign up to the subgroups relevant to you at : http://www.chain-network.org.uk/chain/subgroup_resources.html

• College of Occupational Therapists Research and Development Bulletin. If you are a BAOT member and wish to receive these bulletins email Lesley Gleaves, R&D Administrator (lesley.gleaves@cot.co.uk).  

• Council for Allied Health Professionals Research. If you would like to be added to their mail list please contact Stephanie Portier  hwbsjp@exchange.shu.ac.uk, with your full name, email address, profession and which region you are based in. There is a forthcoming event entitled “How to be an AHP clinician who does research”. Thursday, 3rd November 2016 6-9 pm. Sheffield Hallam University.

 Written by Laura Di Bona