Occupation, singing and Gareth Malone

Over the last few weeks I have watched, enraptured, as Gareth Malone creates a choir out of disparate individuals - this series he's working with people in their place of work. Over the last few years I have never missed a series, from working with school children, residents of a housing estate and, perhaps more well known is Gareth's work with the military wives choir. All absolutely spell-binding and a "feel good" factor ending.

All this time, myself and colleagues have been heartened and amazed at the success of his projects and often commented that, by using the occupation of singing he could be said to be facilitating the well being of each individual in his choir. Maybe he is enabling them to be their own occupational therapist?

In a rather timely coincidence, whilst I was thinking about this concept, (and trying to think how we could contact Gareth to put our ideas to him and see whether he had ever considered aspects of occupational science and occupational therapy principles) Dr Jackie Taylor ran our first online CPD Masterclass entitled: Essential Occupational Science: Putting Occupation back into Occupational Therapy. 
An extremely successful and well attended event that over the course of 90 minutes enabled the participants to consider many aspects of occupational science and its links in informing  the underlying principles of occupational therapy. With strands of well being and identity threaded through the session, Dr Taylor asked participants to consider the underlying meanings attributed to our occupations, social meaning, occupational integrity, co-occupations and much, much more, ending by  reflecting on Whiteford's (2004) suggestion that as occupational therapists we stop trying to define our role, but instead define the underlying perspectives of health and the relationship between health and wellbeing and how, as occupational therapists, we work with that.

Fantastic session Jackie, here's to the next online Masterclass on Change Management  delivered by Heather Davidson- see here for more details about the session.

So, back to Gareth............
In watching the latest series I have watched him form a choir in an NHS Trust, a Royal Mail Depot and an airport. An interview with Gareth on the BBC website clearly demonstrates Gareth's beliefs in the importance of singing and of choirs to an individual's confidence, the positive impact on state of mind in addition to the health benefits of posture, breathing etc. He also acknowledges the benefits of a choir in terms of camaraderie and beating fears of isolation.

But it is much more than that.

In the NHS Trust the choir broke down barriers of hierarchy and gave all staff a feeling of belonging to the whole organisation rather than sticking to 'mixing with their own level'. What was interesting, I think, was that Gareth found it hard to get the choir to display an emotional attachment to their singing. Reflecting possibly the fact that the culture in this environment was one of " professional detachment" in order to deal with the rigours and stresses of day to day situations in their working life? This perhaps has resonance with the issue of cultural attitude and how this can impact on ability to engage in occupation. If the 'form' of an occupation requires emotional attachment or display then it can be difficult for someone to engage fully in that occupation of they are unable to do that (either through individual meaning attributed to that occupation or societal expectation).

In the Royal Mail depot, going through change and uncertainty it bridged the gap between management and ground floor staff to improve morale. In the beginning there was a lot of talk about change, controversy and a suggestion that there song should be Morrisey's "Heaven knows I'm miserable now" ("I was looking for a job...."). In addition, a 'playful' hiss went around the room when it was noted that representatives from management were in the choir. Interestingly, Gareth's song choice for them was "We can work it out" by The Beatles. Members of the choir soon began talking about sending a message and delivering a message which could improve relationships (postal terms rather well used here I thought!) and one manager talking about being in the choir meant that they all helped each other along and that " there's no difference between us". I wonder, does this demonstrate rebuilding a community through occupation that impacts on each individual's well being through improved morale, greater job satisfaction and a feeling of being valued in the workplace? "It's given me some pride back in myself" states one choir member. One manager sees the transferability of what is happening "as a choir we work together brilliantly, we help each other, we put up with each other's mistakes and when we get it right it sounds fantastic. Why doesn't this translate to the workplace? What are we missing?"

In the airport it facilitated crossing the divide of landslide and air side staff, with the clear enabling of an individual, still recuperating after a serious accident, to regain an identity and a role. "this (choir) is helping me feel good about myself again and giving me something to do". One member of the choir talks of a common reason for being there,


I tweeted Gareth to say how much I was enjoying the series and to ask if there were any occupational therapists in his choir. He replied!! Apparently there are. So, if anyone reading this is in one of his choirs, is an OT in his NHS choir, or indeed if you are Gareth himself (and I really hope you are reading this) we would love you to get in contact with us to discuss some of these experiences and issues further.

Please note - links to the iplayer episodes are only available for a short time - 23rd Oct 2012

CPD, Portfolios and Practice Educators

Hello to all our practice placement educators who attended this afternoon's meeting here at the university. It was good to meet you all (and to see some familiar faces - can it really be that long ago since you were students here!!!). Hopefully you have been stimulated by some of the projects and research opportunities we talked about - I know Viv will be sending out emails with the list attached so that you can also share the ideas with your colleagues - and who knows we could be collaborating on some very interesting yet diverse projects.

In terms of the CPD session I led, the key points to remember are:
1. Follow the HPC standards closely
2. If you are chosen for the audit in August this year you will need material from August 2007
3. If you have no material at all - start now - you will then be ready for the audit in 2011
4. If you are chosen you will need to write a profile
5. The COT and HPC have agreed exemplars for profiles for educators, managers and practitioner that you can use as a guidance
6. The HPC also have a very clear list of what CPD activity could be and what might consitute evidence


After demonstrating my own online portfolio (it's not quite ready to be openly linked at the moment - but those eagle eyed of you may have spotted the URL this afternoon and may want to visit. Watch this space as I shall link it through soon) it was interesting to consider some of the issues around public vs private profiles and what decisions might need to be considered before engaging in this. As was mentioned there are a number of software platforms that can be purchased for developing and maintaining a portfolio on line. I chose to use wikispaces for mine and have been influenced very much by Sarah Stewart (NZ ) here she writes about her experiences of developing an eportfolio. .
If you are interested in online presence and profiles then you might be interested to read a previous blog post of ours on professional blogging and also Sarah's Musings on the subject where she considers some of the aspects touched on this afternoon.

Anyway, hope you gained something from this afternoon - maybe you'd like to add a comment or even a reflection at the end of this post (if you're not sure here's a link that might help) - it'll all go to evidencing your CPD (networking with peers, reflection, developing online identity etc etc!!)

How far can you go in 15 months?

(double click on the image for a larger version that you can read)


Sarah and I were asked to present and discuss our experiences of using wikis to one of the other Faculties within the university who are considering introducing some of the web 2.0 applications into their own pedagogy - which of course we were happy to do. Our reflections and tips were well received by the group.
What I think was really surprising was the opportunity to take stock and really reflect on how far we have come over the last 15 months. Sometimes it's hard to see what has been achieved when what you are doing is both a cumulative development and enjoyable. Some of those developments include:

• We have gained understanding and experience of using blogs and wikis within a pedagogical situation - both at undergraduate level and in readiness for our new on-line MSc Advanced OT that launches next week.
• Having gained ethical approval we have researched and evaluated the use of wikis on the undergraduate programme and successfully submitted an abstract for and delivered a poster presentation at the recent annual COT conference .
  
• We also successfully submitted an abstract for a presentation to an international conference - that unfortunately we were unable to attend- on the development of an e-learning programme
• We have set up and maintained a blog - which, without wanting to seem premature - has become more and more productive in generating discussion on current issues within OT across an international perspective
• The blogging experience has also drawn us to other bloggers which has resulted in a collaborative and successfully submitted an abstract for a seminar delivered at the recent COT conference

I guess my point in sharing all of this is to demonstrate that from a position of not knowing anything about blogs, wikis, social networking etc - in just over one year we are becoming recognised as potential leaders in our field. With motivation, support and time that has often been frustrating but more often quite enjoyable - we have opened up a whole new world of possibilties for our own professional development and that of others at all levels within our organisation and beginning to take this into the wider forum of the profession.

If we can do it - anyone can. Bear in mind that there is 15 months before the first HPC CPD audit
of occupational therapists in the UK- why not start now with your development - who knows where it may take you in 15 months time!! Feel free to share your achievements with us - by writing these down it can help you reflect on your own situation and prepare you for evidencing these should you be asked at the audit. We'd love to hear from you.

COT Conference 2008

Image: Will, Sarah and Angela

I've just returned from my day at the COT conference at Harrogate, having left a number of the OT team there for the remainder of the week. Between us we had a number of posters, papers and seminar sessions accepted so we have all been busy both in the preparation and the delivery (especially slap bang in the middle of marking for the conferment board next week!). It was good to see so many of our students there too, maybe a blog post on your experiences would be of interest?

An unusual presentation perhaps was the seminar that Will, Sarah and I delivered on "Is social networking bringing occupational therapists togther?" using our experiences of meeting colleagues via blogging from all over the world. The planning and development of the seminar was conducted between Sarah and I here at Salford, Will Wade at Oxford Brookes, Merrolee Penman in NZ and Natan Berry in USA using many of the web 2.0 applications (e.g wikis, blogs) and a virtual meeting space (elluminate). Sarah, I and Will then delivered the seminar at conference on behalf of us all - and we only met Will in person the day before the seminar was due to run - so living proof that networking is indeed bringing OTs together!

The session was well attended and seemed well received and many questions were fielded afterwards - so as promised here are

| View | Upload your own

our slides which will give you all the links to the blogs we used to illustrate our points - particularly for the discussions about using blogs to demonstrate and evidence CPD activity for the HPC re-registration requirements.
Part of the session explained how to set up a blog and how to comment on others' blogs. So if you are visiting this post having attended the session - I challenge you to make a comment on this post - just let us know that you visited. Click on "comment" at the end of the post and type your comment into the pop-up box, if you have a google account already you can sign in and your user name will appear on your comment, if you don't have an account and don't want to set one up just yet you can tick anonymous.
By all means, please feel free to comment even if you didn't attend - we'd love to hear from you.

Do we Have time to Learn?

image: Mary Seacole Building, University of Salford

Whilst catching up on a few of my favourite blogs for new posts, I came across a recent post by Sarah titled "Do we have time to learn" which considers how we often cite lack of time as a barrier to development and learning. Sarah goes on to examine the issues of whether learning should take place in work time or in our own time (interesting to see that this is an issue in New Zealand as well as the UK). I was seconded to COT for 18months during 2004/2006 where my role was to develop the Post Qualifying Framework and to consider how to guide and enhance the CPD of the members of the organisation and at that time many comments and queries were about who should be responsible for learning.
In this seconded role I also considered issues of how we learn and began to help distinguish between Formal learning (programmes of study, workshops, short courses etc and Informal learning (Learning resulting from daily life activities related to work,family or leisure). It is not structured in terms of learning outcomes, learning time or learning support and typically does not lead to certification. Informal learning may be intentional (blogging maybe?) but in most cases it is non-intentional. In this way I was aiding OTs in considering all these aspects of their development in order to be ready for our first HPC audit of CPD for re-registration in October next year when 2.5% of the register will be selected for audit.

Sarah's post also reminded me of my own recent CPD activities where I have been engaging in experiential learning of web 2.0 applications. I have spent many hours late into the evening blogging and skype-ing, networking with peers from around the world which has been both tiring and illuminating. Yet often I hear from colleagues commenting that they don't have the time and/or the energy to engage in same or similar activities, or jokingly been referred to as a computer geek or equivalent. I have accepted these comments for their face value which has on the whole been humerous and tongue in cheek - but I think there is a deeper issue here, and one that I have often felt frustrated by. I reproduce here a comment from Sarah's post which I think maybe hits the nail on the head (for "nurse/midwife" subsitute OT"):

"When thinking about priorities, we have to ask ourselves the hard questions. For example, how many hours do we spend watching television? How valuable is watching 'Wife Swap' compared to having a conversation with a midwife or nurse in another country on Skype?....
Blogging, sharing and collaborating in wikis, communicating with Skype and Facebook is not a 'waste of time' nor is it an luxurious 'extra', of limited relevance to computer geeks only. So I would reiterate the question asked by Kevin Shadix in response to a post by George Siemens about the importance of taking time to consider one's personal learning networks:

"how can we NOT afford the time?"

I pose the same question here as Sarah, maybe we need to reasses and explore our own attitudes to learning. What do you think? Are you ready for the audit in just over a year's time?

And on a final note I offer this short video by Clay Shirky to watch and enjoy - I believe he makes his point well - what do you think?



College of Occupational Therapists (2006) Post qualifying framework: a resource for occupational therapists. (Core.) London: COT.

Is there anybody out there?

Those of you who are regular readers of our blogs will know that we have been busy developing an MSc Advanced Occupational Therapy to be delivered totally online. In order for this to happen many of us have been engaging in web 2.0 applications to facilitate our programme development but also to engage in learning experiences that we will be asking our students to undertake. To this end I have enrolled on an online programme which week by week has introduced me to some extremely interesting and useful tools for both learning and social networking.
It has become clear to me that the common theme underpinning all of these is the need to know if anyone is out there and the importance of acknowledging each other. Engaging in an online community can only really be effective if you know there is a community out there. Under usual circumstances we engage with others through gestures, tone of voice - or by presence (or indeed absence). On line these things cannot be noted - therefore it is extremely hard to know if anyone is listening, agreeing or indeed disagreeing. We have had over 2000 readers of our blog posts - yet very few of you have left a trace. That first step can be daunting - make a comment -write what you feel - it doesn't have to change the world, it doesn't have be an essay - just let us know you're out there. Click on "comment" at the end of this (or any other) post and up will pop a window for you to type in your comment. Give it a go - it may be the first step of a whole new learning experience for you - and if all else fails - it can be evidence of an aspect of your CPD to demonstrate engagement in discussion with peers both nationally and internationally!!!
Happy commenting...