Free Online Preceptor Workshops

Registration for the UofA FRM CSCE Clinical Educator Workshop on March 8th (Edm) and 15th (Calg) is now closed.

Our apologies if you missed out on this professional development opportunity! More CSCE workshops will be scheduled in 2016.

Please connect with one of our fieldwork team members near you to get any information you are needing about supervision for upcoming placements. We are happy to arrange site visits or set up 1:1 meetings, whenever needed, to support you to keep supporting us!

Just a reminder that there are (at least!) two, free online resources (modules) that you can complete for professional development to continue building your supervisory and leadership skills as a clinical educator:

Preceptor Education Program (UWO): http://www.preceptor.ca/

BC Preceptor Development Initiative: http://www.practiceeducation.ca/

We sure appreciate your interest in 'paying it forward' and contributing to the future of our profession!

OTPDC Conference: Identifying Injustice & Building Advocacy - March 18

Registration is now open for the OTPDC Conference is on Friday March 18^th from 830am-330pm in Corbett Hall, UofA, Edmonton.

The conference title this year is: Identifying Injustice: Building Advocacy into Your Practice. The keynote speaker is Dr. Mary Egan from the University of Ottawa. Alongside a variety of guest speakers, including clinicians, professors, community members, and clients, we will explore how OTs can incorporate advocacy into occupational therapy practice to promote social justice and ensure occupational opportunities for all. 

Tickets are $50. Morning snack and lunch included! 

Click here to register. 

When registering, please be sure to rank your workshop choices from 1-8 in order to complete the form. After submitting the registration form, you will be re-directed to a page with a PayPal link. Click this link to pay. In order for your registration form to be processed, you MUST pay at this time. Your workshop selections will not be saved without a confirmed payment. Registration forms will be processed in the order received, so register early to guarantee your top workshop selections! If you do not have a PayPal account, don’t worry! Just select ‘Don’t have a PayPal account’ to make a one-time online purchase.

Registration will close on February 26^th at 5pm. You will be sent an email with your confirmed workshop schedule by March 1^st. 

Please submit only ONE registration form. If you would like to change your workshop selections, please send an email to je1@ualberta.ca. 

If you have any questions about registration or conference in general, please email Chelsea (cnwong@ualberta.ca) or Kayla (scheersc@ualberta.ca).

We hope to see you there!

UofA MScOT Student Professional Development Committee (PDC)

CSCE Clinical Educator Workshops - Challenges to Clinical Education - March 2016

The UofA Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine Collaborative for Scholarship in Clinical Education (CSCE) is offering the following Clinical Educator Workshop in March 2016 at both our Edmonton and Calgary campuses:

Challenges to Clinical Education

This half day workshop will emphasize strategies for establishing student/clinical relationships that deal well with challenges when they arise. Practical strategies for identifying and resolving areas of difficulty will be presented in a participatory format. This workshop will provide information and experiences that can be used to build and sustain relationships as well as resolve differences.

• In Edmonton on Tuesday, March 8 1300-1600 Room 2-44 Corbett Hall, University of Alberta North [Main] Campus, Edmonton
• In Calgary on Tuesday, March 15 0900-1200 Room 3-26 University of Alberta Calgary Satellite Campus (located at UofC Downtown Campus), 906 8 Avenue SW, Calgary
  

Tele-health access will not be available for this particular CSCE workshop. Registration is free for OTs, PTs and SLPs who have or will be supervising a student. Professional development attendance certificates will be issued. A light breakfast or afternoon snack will be served, depending on the location, so please plan to arrive a few minutes early to get settled.

To register click here.

CSCE workshops on a variety of topics will continue to be offered each year in both Calgary and Edmonton and the workshops could potentially be offered in larger rural locations, if there is sufficient interest. Please be in touch with your ideas and requests!

 

We appreciate your ongoing support of the clinical education of our UofA rehabilitation students!

Supervising Students in a Specialized Practice Setting

Alberta's own Jarett Stastny was recently interviewed to learn about how he coordinates and supports student placements within the Traumatic Psychiatry Injury program at the Millard Health Rehabilitation Centre in Edmonton. Jarett offered practical suggestions about how to facilitate student learning in an 'intense' and emerging area of OT practice.

Check out the article in the Shared Perspectives section of the Jan-Feb 2016 issue of OTNow (Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists):

Supervising students in a specialized practice setting: A new Alberta therapist invests in his profession

http://www.caot.ca/default.asp?pageid=4075
  
CAOT members should be able to follow the link and log in to access the article online.

Helping Students Reflect

By now students are nearing or at the halfway point in OCCTH 526.  This practical experience is allowing them to apply Year 1 and Year 2 (Fall Term) academic course work and is promoting their clinical reasoning, analytical and evaluative skills.  According to the educator Professor David Boud, effective learning will not occur unless you reflect (McClure, n.d.).

One definition of reflection is that it is "a process of reviewing an experience of practice in order to describe, analyse, evaluate and so inform learning about practice" (McClure, n.d., p. 3).

There is so much that we could cover on this topic but perhaps, for this week's blog, we can offer a few resources and tips that may assist you in enhancing your students' abilities to reflect.

Consider Schon's (1983) Reflective Practice Cycle:

Consider Three Aspects of Reflection: Stages, Components, Time Dimensions (Plack et al, 2005):

1) Stages of Reflection include:

• Returning to experience - describing an event or incident that stands out, including who, what when, where, why, and how.
• Attending to feelings - both your own and perhaps others.
• Re-evaluation - reappraise the current situation vis-a-vis past experiences.  Possibly link new concepts to pre-existing knowledge, begin to integrate new information, validate insights, thoughts, perception, and work this new meaning into your own way of being.

2) Components of Reflection may be:

• Content based - exploring the problem/experience to better understand it and consider different perspectives
• Process based - begin to explore other strategies available for use
• Premise based - recognize and explore or critique own assumptions, values, beliefs, and biases.

3) There are 3 possible Time Dimensions:

• Reflection on action (R-O-A) - after the action has been completed
• Reflection in action (R-I-A) - occurs while in the midst of an activity and a result of conscious decisions made on the spot
• Reflection for action (R-F-A) - anticipate situations and/or plans for future to improve the outcome

Journalling is suggested as a mechanism to facilitate reflection.  We encourage students to journal and it is a requirement in their mental health placements.  In a future blog we hope to focus on journalling as a reflective strategy.  Stay tuned!

References:
McClure, P.  (n.d.). Reflection on Practice.  University of Ulster: cw.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415537902/data/learning/8_Reflection%20in%20Practice.pdf
Plack, MM., Driscoll, M., Bliessett, S., McKenna, R., Plack, TP. (2005). A Method for Asssessing Reflective Journal Writing. Journal of Allied Health, 34:199-208.
Schon, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books: USA.

Call for Offers and Placement Requests for Spring & Summer 2016

THANK YOU to those of you who are currently involved in the education 

and support of our UofA MScOT students! 

We greatly appreciated the generous number of offers that we received for OCCTH 526!

We have just begun recruiting for the upcoming Spring and/or Summer sessions:

·        OCCTH 525: Year 1/Level 1:  May 16 - June 30, 2016 (7 weeks)


·        OCCTH 527, Year 2/Level 3A:   July 4 - August 19, 2016 (7 weeks) 
This placement could start one week earlier or up to two weeks later depending on preceptor preference.

Please consider making a placement offer in one of the following ways:

•  1.  If you are an HSPnet user, please accept your Placement Request(s) in HSPnet.

•  2.  If you work for AHS, but are not an HSPnet user, you must notify Tracy Wulff via email with your offer and she will enter it into HSPnet on your behalf: Tracy.Wulff@albertahealthservices.ca 

•  3.  If you work for Covenant Health, you must notify Stacey Roussel and she will accept or enter your offer in HSPnet:  Stacey.Roussel@covenanthealth.ca

•  4.   If you do not work for AHS or CH, contact:  michelle.green@ualberta.ca 

The  placement requests and 'call for offers' for OCCTH 528/Level 3B in September-October will be sent out on May 15, 2016.  These dates and future placement dates can be found on the 'Clinician' page of our OT Department website: 

https://rehabilitation.ualberta.ca/departments/occupational-therapy/clinical-education/clinicians

Thank you for your consideration!

OCCTH 526 begins ...

Happy New Year!

As of today, all of our Year 2 students have started their OCCTH 526 fieldwork placements. We have students being supervised and mentored by OTs in a broad array of practice settings across the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan and even a few students completing placements in British Columbia.

A huge thank you to our OT communities and partners for supporting our students!

At any point during a student placement when support or consultation is needed, students and clinical educators are encouraged to reach out to our fieldwork team. We are here to assist you in navigating the process of supervision and evaluation. Here is the link to our fieldwork webpage & our individual contact information:

https://rehabilitation.ualberta.ca/departments/occupational-therapy/clinical-education/clinicians/fieldwork-dates-and-contacts

While OCCTH 526 is in session, we'll be creating a weekly blog post ... so stay tuned and subscribe below to get weekly updates and access to information, resources and fieldwork tips!