BSc (Hons) Occupational Therapy

This module will be focused on the development of academic and professional skills for transition to higher education. A wide range of different activities will be used to assess and develop skills including reading, writing, information technology, library searching and problem-solving. You will be encouraged to reflect on your personal development as university students and as adult learners. Effective time management will be encouraged, as will be the development of personal resilience for learning within higher education.

This module aims to provide you with an orientation to foundational human sciences, normal anatomy and physiology, and the major theories and frameworks linked with a biopsychosocial conceptualisation of health. The module provides a foundation on which profession-specific content will develop, focusing increasingly on abnormal human sciences in common and then more complex and rare conditions.

This module explores the concept and practice of inter-professional working. You will be encouraged to reflect on developing a professional identity as an allied healthcare professional (AHP) before exploring the roles and responsibilities of the range of other health and social care professionals and organisations that support care in community and hospital settings.

You will explore how occupation focused practice provides unique focus for occupational therapists. You will learn how occupational therapists use theoretical concepts that shape and guide the profession and discover the link between occupation and wellbeing in different contexts throughout the lifespan. It will introduce Occupational Science philosophy, global perspectives on participation, social and occupational justice, such as inclusion/exclusion, representation and discrimination. You will get an opportunity to consider how personal, local, social and national factors impact on participation, drawing on research and literature from occupational science, sociology, disability studies, critical theory, occupational therapy theory and models.

You will learn how to identify performance skills required to perform an occupation and be able to identify the relationship between these skills and an individual’s participation in their chosen occupation. You will review and practice administering standardised and non-standardised assessments and evaluate their relevance and reliability. You will also develop a process and strategy to describe a person’s occupational performance, built around an observed performance of an occupation in context. In addition, you will develop your communication strategies to gather an occupational narrative from service users and learn how to analyse and document your findings to plan for the future. 

This module advances your knowledge and understanding of the scientific method. Specifically, the module will provide you with the ability to apply systematic approaches to identifying, critiquing and applying the evidence-base for practice within their profession. In this way, you will develop a foundational knowledge of research methods (required for critical appraisal) and competence with critical appraisal.

The core skill of an occupational therapist is to work collaboratively with the individual, carers, stakeholders, communities and organisations. This module is concerned with the knowledge, understanding, and skills required to competently use professional reasoning to inform all stages of the occupational therapy process. It will support you to utilise your occupational therapy theoretical knowledge base to analyse assessment findings and develop professional reasoning skills. The module will explore the potential causes of occupational performance issues observed and determine an appropriate intervention strategy and outcome measure. You will be challenged to consider how you actively listen and work in partnership with service users, carers, colleagues, and others to support decision making.

This module will consolidate and continue to build your skills in providing person centred occupational therapy interventions and introduce leadership skills. It will use occupational therapy process models introduced in Year 1 to frame intervention methods and guide you in planning and facilitating therapeutic groups. Through simulation you will deepen your understanding of the unique contribution occupational therapy has to offer, while establishing complementary skills in risk assessment, audit, therapeutic use of self, and mentoring.

The focus of this module is to develop your awareness of group interventions outside of traditional occupational therapy provision. It will move your focus away from the health and wellbeing of the individual and increase your understanding of collective occupations, and how social, political and economic factors influence occupation within communities. You will consider new and emerging roles, learning about the delivery of occupational therapy within non-traditional specialities. You will also consider how to confront existing boundaries to be able to deliver Occupational Therapy in diverse settings, and the challenges and benefits this may bring.

You will develop a critical understanding of the occupational therapy knowledge base in practice and how occupational therapy works in partnership within the systems specific to the practice setting The health and care professions council standards of proficiencies for occupational therapists will be integral to your competences, you will be required to demonstrate your understanding of the complexities of practice, including an understanding of the impact of culture, equality, diversity on practice; identifying the importance of being resilient in practice; effective communication and working in partnership with service users, carers, colleagues and other stakeholders. 

This module is linked to the leadership pillar of professional practice, providing you with the opportunity to link the improvement of health and care services to your personal and professional leadership development. As an interprofessional module, you will be able to work with students from other professional groups to bring profession-specific and transferable skills and insights to resolve real-world challenges. These challenges will be collated from service partners, which together with the design of the assessment strategy, will enable you to build further connections with employers.

This module aims to further your intellectual curiosity, ethical engagement with the world and its future, and the ability to ‘think globally and act locally’. It will focus on the concept and practice of occupational justice, and will prepare you to meet WFOT, RCOT, HCPC and CCCU graduate requirements. You will have the opportunity to develop critical and imaginative thinking and compassionate responsibility for society and environmental resources. It will aim to consolidate your critical lens framed by the concepts of occupation, occupational beings, and occupational justice that address the relationship between humans and their environments, and their participation in everyday meaningful activities, which influence the wellbeing of individuals and groups. This module will prepare you to apply occupational justice concepts and frameworks in your future practice with diverse communities locally, nationally, and internationally.

This module will support you to critique current and emerging theories and models of practice, and your application to people across the life span from different socio-cultural groups. You will further develop your knowledge and skills to access and critically evaluate best practice and the effectiveness of interventions related to occupational needs. You will explore and identify the unique contribution of occupational therapy to promoting engagement in meaningful occupation and its impact on health and wellbeing. You will critically analyse the transformative power that engagement in a range of occupation focused activity has to transform the health and wellbeing of people in different socio-cultural groups and environments. Opportunities for interprofessional and expert by experiences education occur within this module as professionals and Expert by experiences and / or carers are embedded in some of the sessions.