At Manchester Occupational Therapy Services, we take our responsibility for our team every bit as seriously as our responsibility to our clients.
A significant part of this is encouraging and supporting our people in undertaking further training and qualifications. We help them in progressing in their roles and careers. This in turn is of huge benefit to Manchester Occupational Therapy Services as it means we can offer even more to our clients.
Occupational Therapy Educators
One of our team, Taya Phillips, an excellent and compassionate Occupational Therapist recently trained as a student educator. Already experienced and highly qualified, this is a worthy string to Taya’s bow and another valuable addition to Manchester Occupational Therapy Services and our clients.
Taya graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Occupational Therapy and is dedicated in her support of young people and their parents or carers, as well as associated multi-disciplinary teams. She helps clients and their caregivers to understand sensory processing, aiding participation in their meaningful occupations and activities of everyday life.
Taya is experienced in providing Occupational Therapy assessments and interventions to children and young people who are struggling with fine motor, gross motor, cognitive and sensory issues as well as young people struggling with chronic pain, functional neurological disorder and rheumatological conditions. She also has invaluable experience with adult orthopaedics, elderly complex discharge unit, hand therapy and rheumatology outpatients, adult community rehabilitation, role emerging placement with Riverside Housing project, and male adult forensics.
Occupational Therapy Practice Education
We asked Taya about her latest achievement:
“I'm Taya, an occupational therapist with Manchester Occupational Therapy Services. This morning, I completed my Practice Educator training with Manchester Metropolitan University. The course was delivered online and was fascinating, inspiring me to consider how I would clinically support a student. Throughout the course, I studied multiple videos of students who experienced difficulties whilst on placements. The students shared and discussed strategies that they found helpful, and – enlighteningly - other methods which they found not so helpful. Within this, we were then able to evaluate how I would deal with each scenario to the best of my ability to ensure that the student achieves the best outcome and learning opportunities available.”
Comprehensive Training
“The training was split into different sections, each of which covered key areas to consider when taking on students. For example, how best to incorporate evidence-based practice and professional guidelines whilst in a clinical situation. This may sometimes be more challenging with time restrictions, so I was encouraged to find solutions to these difficulties. For example, timetabling protected supervisions and catch-ups, and scheduling in discussions following sessions to ensure the student meets the best learning objectives. I now feel prepared to share my clinical knowledge and experiences with a third-year student who also aspire to work within a paediatric community setting.”
Our occupational therapists are the best, and by becoming student educators, we can help ensure another generation of the best occupational therapists.