About the website

It is with great pleasure that the Occupational Therapy Practice Education Collaborative - Queensland (OTPEC-Q) presents this website to occupational therapists who currently support the professional education and development of occupational therapy students, and those who may wish to in the future.

The aim of this website is to act as a portal for education, training and resources for occupational therapists who supervise student on practice placement. The site includes a variety of innovative placement stories and articles designed to create further practice education opportunities and to enable therapists to discover how student placements can work for them. Students are also encouraged to access the site to watch some of our placement stories from other students, and to nominate their practice educator for a commendation award.

The OTPEC-Q hopes that this website will promote and support the fieldwork opportunities available to occupational therapy students.

Using the website

Engaging with a student as a clinical educator and supervising them on placement is a rewarding task! Now with the information and resources contained on this website establishing and sustaining rewarding clinical placements for yourself and occupational therapy students can be achieved in a more timely and supported way.

This website enables you to share in the already prepared resources and information to support student placements. This website was established by the OTPEC-Q and aims to support student supervisors from metro Brisbane, to downtown Nambour and Cairns, to rural Mt Isa, to tropical Thursday Island to meet the challenging but always rewarding task of student supervision.

The website contains six modules for information, education and tips for occupational therapy practice educators. These are divided as follows:

Why supervise a student?
Select the Placement Option to Suit You
Planning and Preparing for Placement
Introduction to Basic Supervision Skills
Advanced Supervision Tips and Suggestions
Working Through Challenges on Placement

If you currently have a student on placement, are about to, or are thinking about placement possibilities – this section is for you!

In addition to this, we have designed and collated a variety of placement resources, including the Clinical Education Resource Kit, and the corresponding kit for mental health placements. Links to these, in addition to useful fact sheets, templates and checklists, can all be found by scrolling down the page – or via the main menu above.

A new addition to this updated website that we are quite excited about is the Practice Education Stories section. In there, you will find a variety of videos and articles telling the stories of innovative placement successes through the eyes of multiple stakeholders. We hope these stories will provide inspiration and food for thought…

Happy viewing!

Acknowledgements

This website was built upon the substantial work established by Web Services at The University of Queensland in consultation with Cate Fitzgerald and Anne-Marie Hunter on behalf of the OTPEC-Q. The development of this website was an outcome of the OTPEC-Q project "Engaging the Clinicians" funded by Queensland Health in 2009 and project managed by Dr Sylvia Rodger Chair of OTPEC-Q (previously QOTFC) and Anne Edwards, Dr Yvonne Thomas, Jacqui Broadbridge, and Linda Hansen/Rachel Kipping.

The latest update to this site was completed as a part of a project by Occupational Therapists Wendy Hood and Chris Herd in close collaboration with the UQ Web Services Team. In particular OTPEC-Q would like to thank Alice Bopf (UQ) for her guidance on the web design process.

The OTPEC-Q would also like to thank and acknowledge the support of the numerous occupational therapists around Queensland who contributed their ideas, time and resources to this website. And finally, thanks also to all members of the OTPEC-Q Practice Educator Portfolio Team in 2016/2017 (Dr Jodie Copley, Deborah Busch and Cate Fitzgerald) for their guidance on this site.