OccuBuzz and World Occupational Therapy Day

Today is World Occupational Therapy Day - all around the globe occupational therapists are engaging in activity to promote the importance of occupational balance, engagement and performance to individual and community health and wellbeing and celebrating our profession.

Here at University of Salford, as part of the celebrations, we are officially launching our newly developed app: Occubuzz. Some of you may have had a sneak preview already via OT News and WFOT.

 “OccuBuzz” is a light hearted app that draws on the concept that what we do affects how we feel (Wilcock 2005), and that by encouraging occupational balance  - the right amount of occupation and the right variation between occupations (Wagman et al 2012) we can work towards achieving the subjective experience of eudaimonic wellbeing (Hayward and Taylor 2011). This fun app is intended to get people talking and thinking about what they do and how it makes them feel.  We hope that it will provide people with some suggestions as to how to achieve occupational balance, and to highlight the potential benefit of occupational therapy for those who are unable to be their own therapist.

The app contains 7 questions that ask you to identify how you feel about the things you have to, need to or want to do in your weekly routine. A quick press of a button will provide you with feedback and will identify if you may be experiencing occupational balance, occupational deprivation or occupational overload. If the news is bad, the app then has a 'help me' button, and offers tips and links to improve wellbeing that are that are based on occupational therapy philosophy and principles.

The app is not aimed at occupational therapists, but at the general public. We would like to see the concept of occupational balance seep into public consciousness, and to highlight the steps a person can take to influence their own wellbeing through what they do. We believe that many people can be their own occupational therapist and in this way occupational therapy can be “defined by those who may benefit from it, not its practitioners” (Hayward & Taylor 2011 p 137). This is not to say the occupational therapist is redundant. Some people will be unable to overcome their challenges without specialist help, and the app contains links to the World Federation of Occupational Therapists for those who want to find out more about us.

This app isn't perfect of course. We acknowledge that occupational balance and participation in occupation are complex concepts; values and culture for example, influence occupational choices and these have not been given full consideration in this version of the app. The app is a work in progress.  It is intended that a fuller version will be developed on the basis of feedback from this one and so we welcome your help in sharing the app, and in making it better by collecting feedback and telling us about it.  

update: 23.2.2020 The app is no longer available

Hayward C, Taylor J (2011) Eudaimonic Well-being: Its Importance and Relevance to Occupational Therapy for Humanity Occ Ther. Int 18(2011) 133-141 Wagman P, Hakansson C, Bjorklund A (2012) Occupational balance as used in occupational therapy: A concept analysis Scandanavian Journal of OT 19: 322-327 Wilcock A A (2005) Occupational Science: Bridging occupation and health CJOT Vol 72 Number 1 5-12

Behind the Scenes......................

So...... many of you will by now be familiar with the role that Sarah and I played in the First ever World OT Day 24 hour Global Virtual Exchange. Working alongside our colleagues Merrolee Penman (Aotearoa/NZ), Anita Hamilton and Susan Burwash (Canada) and Karen Jacobs (USA) as OT4OT, between us we faciltated 24 sessions in the virtual classroom delivered by a diverse range of occupational therapists in practice, education and research, recent graduates, service users and also non occupational therapists who gave their time and expertise free to engage with World OT Day. The recordings of these sessions can still accessed on our website click here
Now, in the not too distant future we are expecting to write up the experience for publication submission - so I neither want to pre-empt content, nor claim the sole rights to the experience - which is why we haven't blogged about it to date. However, following a recent conversation we believe that our story to tell is what was happening behind the scenes  during the 8 hours of the UK leg.

3.00am UK time: Sarah and I attended launch of the 24 hour Virtual Exchange. From our seperate houses we set our alarms for 2.45am, entered the room at the click of a button and - speaking for myself - lay in bed with my laptop listening to the opening. Couldn't find headphones in semi-darkness so computer started speaking, Bruno (dog) started barking and then whole house awake. Oh dear - not a good start to the day for me.

6.30am UK time :Alarm goes off for second time. Knowing that we would benefit from the support of each other we booked at room here at the university so that Sarah, myself and Denis (trusty learning technologist) could spend the day together. Slight change of plan occurred at last minute as we had originally planned for the UK leg to start at 10am UK time (civilised time - time to brave the traffic, have a coffee and be fresh for the day ahead).
No.........
Needed to facilitate 9am session UK time which meant opening up the virtual room at 8.30am to meet Kit Sinclair - needed to be here for 7.30am - traffic at its rush hour worst, coffee shop not open.

9.00am UK time- so far so good, session running smoothly, great attendance, technology working. What we began to realise is that we had a brief window of about 20 minutes every 2 hours where we could nip out for refreshment or comfort stops. Denis was vital to the half hour setting up period every hour so eventually we worked out a rota

11.20am UK time - Denis nipped out to get coffee - hurrah - even came back with chocolate biscuits.
Sessions been going fine - had to message a couple of times in the live sessions to get the next speakers' attention to come to their own set up room - they were so engrossed in the presentations before them.
Virtual room running fine, real room beginning to look a bit like a disaster area - coffee cups, empty biscuit wrappers...................

12.30pm UK time: Denis came back with boxes of chips, more coffee mmmm. Then realised that was actually very difficult to eat and remain professional. As chips arrived - so did the worst case scenario. The link to the Seychelles went down. The delay was about 10 seconds and so we couldn't communicate verbally at all. During the next 45 minutes I wish we had videoed the Real room environment for you! Whilst trying to keep a calm outwardly facing manner, panic overtook the room. Chips were forgotten as all three of us tried to communicate with the Seychelles team, identify the technological issues and work out what Plan B would be. By this time, participants had begun to arrive in the virtual space and I confidently announced we were going with Plan B - then in the Real space trying to work out with Sarah what Plan B was!! Shoulders were shrugging, palms were displayed in a "no idea" gesture and hysterics were close by. A few choice words were shared (not on line I am pleased to say) and eventually we managed to go forwards with the occasional "flight attendant" speech from me. In between times I was trying to eat cold chips (yuk) and prevent the ensuing hysterical laughter from spilling into the session!!

4.00pm UK time: the final session of the UK leg just completed and we handed over to USA for the next session. We finally removed our headsets, switched off the computers, cleared away all the debris around us and wended our way down to the coffee shop for a debrief and a moment of calm before braving the rush hour traffic for the second time that day and then home to the laptop to join in a few more sessions - but happily as a participant.

2.00am UK time: Unfortunately neither of us made the final session   - even for us that would have been a step too far. However I have since listened to the recording and thank Anita for her closing remarks about our collaborative team effort.
So - do you have any experiences of the day you could share with us here - we'd love to hear from you.