Members of Occupational Therapy Student Ambassador (OTSA) has been striving their best to organize various activities for Occupational Therapy (OT) students to broaden their horizons and for the general public to promote OT profession. With secondary school students being one of the major targets of promotion, they organised Elite Occupational Therapist Taster Programme (EOTTP).
With the enormous support from the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences (RS), EOTTP was successfully held on 6 July 2019 at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). Over 100 aspiring participants from more than 40 top secondary schools in Hong Kong have joined on this special occasion. After the opening speech given by Dr Andy Cheng (Associate Professor of RS), a kick-off ceremony was done to announce the commencement of the activity.
In order to give the participants an overview of OT beforehand, we have invited Mr Tony Wong (Clinical Associate of RS) to have a brief sharing about OT and PolyU OT Programme. After the sharing, the participants were divided into small groups led by OT students and began their one-day experience as an Occupational Therapist. In order to provide a thorough view on the roles and expertise of Occupational Therapists, we have prepared laboratory tours and hands-on experience for the participants. By visiting the teaching classrooms, participants could develop basic understanding about home modification, remedial activities and some common musculoskeletal disorders. On the other hand, we have introduced several OT concepts and models, including 8 areas of occupation and Person-Environment-Occupation Model. With these concepts, participants were encouraged to think as an Occupational Therapist and work on some simple case analysis.
It is hoped that the secondary school students could develop a clear picture of OT through this one-day programme. Although EOTTP is the last event organised by OTSA in the academic year 2018-2019, OTSA would continue to promote our profession through different activities in the future.
