CPD activities: Working with occupational therapy

By working with occupational therapists, occupational health professionals can help create a service that delivers rehabilitation. These CPD activities, compiled by Professor Anne Harriss, should help OH professionals begin to think about what this might mean. 

These activities should be completed after reading Mark Howard’s article on how occupational therapy can strengthen occupational health.

Activity 1

Dame Carol Black’s Working for a healthier tomorrow report incorporates the importance of the workplace in relation to health and wellbeing. Read this report and reflect on its relevance to your own area of practice, also thinking about how the findings can be related to vocational rehabilitation in particular. 

Activity 2

Waddell and Burton, in their publication Is work good for your health and wellbeing?, highlight that good work is good for health. Helping people to return to, or stay in, work is an important facet of occupational health practice. A further paper from Waddell, Burton and Kendall, Vocational rehabilitation: what works, for whom, and when? reviews the scientific evidence that underpins effective vocational rehabilitation.

Read both reports to gain a greater appreciation of how and why good work is good for health, the importance of vocational rehabilitation, and the underpinning evidence.

Activity 3

Read this article from Andrew Frank, which discusses supporting ill or disabled people into work. Relate it to your practice as an OH professional. 

Activity 4

Reflect on a case you’ve been involved in and have had to develop a return to work strategy. Think about what went well and what might have been better managed. Would you change your approach, if so, how? Can you identify any learning needs in order to better manage a similar case in future? How might you address these learning needs using webinars, reading or training courses?

Activity 5

Assume that a start-up company has appointed you to be their occupational health provider. One of their staff, Jenny aged 36, is an administrator and was involved in a car accident and sustained a brain injury. Jenny hopes to return to work at the end of her current sick note which runs for the next two weeks. She is making excellent progress but has some residual problems including:

• when she becomes fatigued she has a degree of ataxia. She finds climbing stairs difficult; her office is on the third floor and the lift is unreliable
• cognitive dysfunction which she describes as “brain fog”
• some degree of aphasia. She sometimes struggles to remember words and when fatigued her speech becomes slurred but this is improving.

She is covered by an insurance policy which is funding private occupational and speech therapies.

You are now planning her return with Jenny and her manager. What would be important factors to consider?

You should identify the policies that the organisation should have in place to ensure that staff like Jenny can be supported back into the workplace.

Activity 6

You are working with the HR department to look at how the organisation can be more disability aware. What should you consider? The following links will help you with this:

5 ways to create a disability inclusive workplace 

Acas guidance about disability discrimination 

Acas guidance on disability at work

Activity 7

Watch the following TED talks

The future of rehabilitation, Swathi Kiran

Occupational therapy and neuroplasticity after brain injury, Dr Shawn Phipps

A vision of brain injury rehabilitation, Dr A M Barrett