(upbeat music)
- Hi, I'm Angela Berndt.
I'm the program director of the undergraduate program
for Occupational Therapy, bachelor with honors
and the graduate entry master's program here as well.
I've been an occupational therapist
since I graduated from this program in 1987,
and I've had several many careers
within that period of time.
I've always been passionate about it.
I came into the profession because it doesn't matter
which part of occupational therapy you work in,
you're really helping people live their best lives.
And so it's a very rewarding career.
Ultimately, our aim is to produce industry ready graduates,
and really we are all about educating
young health professionals who can be innovative
and adaptive to the demands in society.
Occupational Therapy works with people from birth
right through to the end stages of life
in every sector that you can think of.
So education, disability, health,
aging, community, and so on.
So our aim ultimately is to produce really flexible,
adaptable, creative thinking,
problem solving occupational therapists,
but also with a really strong foundation,
a sense of their career, their values
and what they can contribute to society.
So for the undergraduate program,
we are a four year full time program,
you can apply to do it part-time option,
but that application occurs after you're successful
and enrolled into the program.
Our undergraduate four year program
and our two year Graduate Entry Master's
Occupational Therapy program,
both situated here at the City East campus.
One of the things we're well known for here
is a program of courses
called Participatory Community Practice.
They enable our graduates to work in health promotion
and project and non-government sector roles,
and that enables the students to do project-based work,
which works at a community and population level.
That really mirrors contemporary practice
in Occupational Therapy.
So most people expect to graduate from an OT program,
being able to work with individuals and families,
but one of the points of difference
that we've developed here in this program
over a couple of decades now, is that way of working
in a collaborative and participatory way
at the community level as well.
In the early developmental stages of both programs,
so early in the program, students will do
a part-time placement that is supported in industry,
either with older people or people living with dementia,
running a cognitive stimulation therapy program,
which is an evidence-based program, or working with children
in children's centers and kindergartens,
working alongside their preschool teachers and all the staff
in the other practice areas.
Increasingly we are focusing
on our interprofessional learning components of the course
so that our graduates can come out and work confidently
in a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary teams.
We receive a lot of questions
about the Occupational Therapy programs,
let me answer some of them now.
(upbeat music)
Occupational Therapy is an Allied Health profession.
Primarily if someone comes to an occupational therapist,
it typically is at a time in their life
where they're wanting to do something
that they're having difficulty doing in their daily life,
or they've experienced an illness or a trauma
or a sudden change in their life,
or they're growing with a disability,
but the disability is now impairing them
or holding them back from doing something
that they really want to do.
We work with people from all ages
and in all areas of life.
So for us, the primary occupations would be, play.
So we expect people to be able to play
and particularly children and learning to make friends,
going to school and being successful at school.
The occupations of adulthood
are typically moving into university, productive roles,
work, study, creating families,
starting that part of your life.
Then into older adulthood, it might be transitioning
out of employment and into more leisure roles, et cetera.
And some of the things
that are really very straightforward,
like basic self care and activities of daily living
that again, when you're able to do them,
you take them for granted,
but an occupational therapist sees occupation
as everything we do in our daily lives
that gives us meaning and health and wellbeing.
And also, I guess the way we occupy our time
and working with people in partnership
to work through the blocks or the barriers
to get them back to doing the things they really need
and want to do to live a healthy and happy life.
The graduate entry program is an intensive two year program.
You come into that program with an existing degree
in another bachelor level degree,
and that doesn't have to be a health degree.
There are some places in that program
for people with degrees, such as law or nursing
or teaching and so forth,
and then it's an intensive two year program.
And both programs produce graduates
who are then able to register with the peak body,
the national registration board.
And the other thing to remember in both of our courses,
our programs, the undergraduate
and the graduate entry program,
you will do a thousand hours of field work,
industry based learning.
And that is graded up in complexity
from the early foundation years through to the fourth year,
particularly in the undergraduate,
which is all out in placement in nine week blocks.
But ultimately both of them cover off
on the same competencies, and both of them produce graduates
who go out into entry-level practice.
So the Bachelor of Occupational Therapy
is a with honors program,
and at the halfway point in third year,
students can stream into the research honors
or stay in the professional honors.
The students, if they've got a high enough GPA
can apply to go into the research honors pathway,
and those students will do an honors prep,
and then in fourth year,
they'll do a primary honors research study,
which is scoped to the size of a fourth year undergraduate.
They also graduate with an honors designation.
They also are able to register with Opera
and go into their clinical career.
But if they go through the research pathways,
they are also eligible to apply for a PhD scholarship
at some point in the future.
And that is a part of the career of occupational therapy
that we're really encouraging people to think about
into the future.
The graduate outcomes are very strong.
We have data that we've collected over the last few years
to see where our graduates are employed,
and we can really share that they are employed
in every sector, health, disability,
aging, community, working in private practice.
The private practice sector in Occupational Therapy
is one of the fastest growing sectors,
and some of those private practices
are owned by our own graduates.
Our graduates are all employed into their area,
typically their area of interest and are very mobile.
So we have people from our program working
Metropolitan, Adelaide, rural and regional South Australia
states and territories of Australia,
and also in most countries overseas.
So the employment outcomes are very strong.
If you have any other questions
about the Bachelor of Occupational Therapy
or the Master's Entry Occupational Therapy programs,
please feel free to get in contact
and we'll see you on campus.