OT students (1 Viewer)

[Lu Lu]

Hey anyone out there that does Occupational therapy. I'm just wondering how many future OT's on BOS? What uni's do you go to and what year are you in? I'm at UWS in 1st year.
Has anyone done clinical placements/pracs yet and what its like? Mines in a few weeks and I kinda of don't know what to expect. If you have done it where was your placement and was your supervisor OK?

 

[hipsta_jess]

I'm a Newcastle girl, first year.

We had our first prac week 12-13 of last semester. It was AMAAAAAAAAZING!!!! It really depends what your supervisor is like how much you get to do, some of my friends said they did nothing for two weeks because their supervisors believed it to be entirely observational, but I was lucky and got to do a fair bit...Pray you don't have to do a shower Ax, lol, veeeeery uncomfortable.
My placement was on the mid north coast, and my supervisor was greeeeeat.

Ohhh, and the fieldwork evaluation manual, the book thats made by the 4 NSW OT schools, read through it before you go, it really shows you what the supervisor will be looking for.

 

[Lu Lu]

I'm a Newcastle girl, first year.

I'm actually going to newcastle for my placement at Rankin Park Center. I'm looking forward to it cause its rehab stuff and thats kinda what i'm interested in. I've had a bit of a look at the evaluation manual & its looks ok but i can't imaging sitting down with a supervisor and saying "Did you think I behaved like a professional?" Seems kinda obivous but anyways I guess its a good learning experience. Anyways back to study for exams. Yay first years all most over!

 

[hipsta_jess]

I'm just scared for when we get into latter years, and its not just the first 3 criteria being marked!!
Do you guys get 'points' for placement? Like, for us,
Newcastle/Hunter=0
Sydney=3
rural=10

and then all our points from the first 3 years gets added up, and whoever has the highest points gets their first preference for 4 yr prac (hello 3 months away from uni!!)

 

[Lu Lu]

I don't think we get points. The lectures just asked where we had accommodation within 2 hours of Sydney or in Sydney and you got a list of 35 places with a choice of 10 prefences. I think if you got a crappy prac this year, ie your 10th prefernces or a place thats not even in your prefernces like what happened to some peoples, then they would give you a good one next year.

Also I think the type of place we go to (eg childrens, old people, community, rehab, etc) affects our future prefernces. That is once we have gone to a childrens hospital we can't go to another. But that more to do with WFOT than the uni cause you have to have a bit of a variety in experinces.

Did anyone at Newcastle fail placement? Cause our lectures sacred us saying that you can't get below a 3 on the evaluation manual.

 

[hipsta_jess]

I didn't hear about anyone failing, but I know in previous years people have (but, thats more like, third year and stuff...I think it would be near impossible to fail a first year prac)

Our second year placements used to be organised so that everyone did a paeds AND general physical AND neuro AND occ health...but during the accreditation process last yr it was recommended that they changed it, so now we can do what we want (now we have only 2 2nd yr pracs, instead of 4), but if we do the first in acute then the second can't be acute.

So you wanna go into rehab? I'm pretty sure I want to do paeds.

 

[Lu Lu]

now we have only 2 2nd yr pracs, instead of 4

OMG you used to have 4 2nd year prac's! We still only have one! But in third year we get two 5 weekers so thats OK.

I reckon at least 50 people out of the 70 people in first year at UWS want to work in peads. It kinda good cause it means that not many people will want the prac's I want.

 

[hipsta_jess]

70 people? Suck shit, we had 55 at the start of the year, and 46 now! Gotta love small years!! Although, I think CSU is even smaller than us.

Yeah, now we have:
1st yr- 2 weeks x1
2nd yr- 4 weeks x2
3rd yr- 4 weeks x1
4th yr- 12 weeks x1

We used to have:
1st yr- 2 weeks x1
2nd yr- 3 weeks x4
3rd yr- 4 weeks x2
4th yr- 8 weeks x1

 

[Lu Lu]

We double the intake from 2004! But is good cause it means that we have heaps of choice for our timetables! I think Sydney is double us- that would sux majorily
Anyways our placements goes
1st - 1x2 weeks in december (yes we miss out on two weeks holidays!)
2nd- 1x2 weeks
3rd- 2x 5 weeks
4th - 10 weeks (its so long I hope i'm not at Broken Hill or somewhere like that!)

 

[hipsta_jess]

2 people from my year went to Broken Hill, fair enough it was only 2 weeks, but they seemed to enjoy it. But, they're definitely keen to be 'not quite so far out' next time, lol
I'm pretty bummed about our placements, Newcastle is widely regarded as the best OT programme in the country, and a large part of that is the amount of fieldwork we did. But, alas, it is not to be.

 

[Lu Lu]

Newcastle still does about 6 more weeks of pracs than us but we are well regarded being an extremely practically based uni rather theory thus making us more experienced OT's to have in the work place compared to other larger uni's such as Sydney. Also we learn a larger variety of OT theroies than Sydney do. Or at least thats what the uni tells us. I hadn't really herad much about Newcastle simiply cause everyone thinks the UAI is extremely high and none of my lectures come from their but its good to know that you guys are also really focused on prac too. Anyways we all end up at OT so I guess we must have some knowlegde in the area even if it is focused on different things.

 

[hipsta_jess]

Among clinicians, Newcastle students are widely regarded as the holy grail, not only of NSW students, but the entire country...a combination of factors really, the amount of prac we do, PBL, etc...apparently we 'can think for ourselves, not like those Sydney students' lol\
The reason our UAI is so high is coz of demand, demand is because of our reputation. Personally, I think its all a crock of shit, but ya know.

(and no, I don't necessarily agree with this, its just the stupid reputation thing...WFOT wouldn't grant accreditation to other uni's if the uni didn't properly prepare everyone)

So you guys have to learn about all different models too? I'm soooo over them!! So far we've done MOHO and MOOP, next year we do CMOP and some others.

I'd love to go to the WFOT conference, too, but at the price of it, its just crazy!

 

[Lu Lu]

We did COMP this year. It was actually OK - just like filling in a survey! But I hated the others we did.

 

[hipsta_jess]

So what subjects do you guys do in first year?

We had:

Sem 1 (keep in mind there was a prac a week before exams):
anatomy (entire musculoskeletal system)
biomed (kinda...physiology)
occupational therapy + occ science

Sem 2:
biomed
health sociology
OT and occ science

methinks we need waaaay more anatomy

 

[Lu Lu]

Sem 1
Communication for the helping profession
Introduction to health sciences - how to references & say a speech
Human Medical Science 1 - very similar to bio at school
Intro to OT - basic OT stuff & basic models & theories

Sem 2
Human medical science 3 - anatomy of muscloskeletal system
Intro to resercah for health - very basic & a complete waste of time
OT clinical placement 1 - wheelchairs, walking aids, handwashing, minimal lifting, more communication skills etc
Intro to psychology of health

I think we need more OT subjects in first year. Still only have 1 OT subject in first sem next year but three in 2nd. They should be more spread out cause the other pointless subjects such as reserach and health sciences are very basic subjects and bore me to death.
More time to cover the anatomy would be good cause we spend six weeks on the upper limb and only six weeks on the rest of the body and are expected to know it all for the final. Also I don't think I'll remember any of it in 3 years when I start working which is kinda scary cause people will rely on me to know that stuff.

 

[Leap]

..apparently we 'can think for ourselves, not like those Sydney students' lol

Whats with all this Sydney bashing?

I'm a 2nd year at Sydney. I'd never heard anything at all about Newcastle uni until I did my 2nd year placement in Newcastle. While I was there, all the OTs from Newcastle uni were all practically falling over themselves trying to prove how much better they think Newcastle uni is. Believe me, it got -really- annoying after the first few days.

The reason our UAI is so high is coz of demand, demand is because of our reputation. Personally, I think its all a crock of shit, but ya know.

When you say the UAI is about demand, you have to consider the fact that Newcastle has a lot less OT places available.

Like, you guys have around 50-70 people in your course right? Well Sydney has an intake of around 180.

So having less places available at Newcastle automatically pushes the UAI up if there are not enough places to meet demand. Then consider the fact that Newcastle uni is the only uni in the region that offers OT, whereas in the Sydney region theres also UWS. That also makes demand higher.

I find that having such a large amount of students at Sydney means that you really have to learn to figure things out for yourself and research things independently - the total opposite of that sydney-students-don't-think-for-themself thing.

Also we learn a larger variety of OT theroies than Sydney do. Or at least thats what the uni tells us.

hmmmm. Personally, I'm so sick of having to relate everything back to different theories of OT. I wouldn't want to have to do any more of that

More time to cover the anatomy would be good cause we spend six weeks on the upper limb and only six weeks on the rest of the body and are expected to know it all for the final. Also I don't think I'll remember any of it in 3 years when I start working which is kinda scary cause people will rely on me to know that stuff

We do 2 anatomy units, one focussing on trunk and upper limb in 2nd semester of 1st year, and one focussing on the hip and leg and just about everything else in 1st semester 2nd year. It was so insanely detailed, and they made both exams really hard so a lot of people failed.

As for not remembering it when you graduate, I totally understand what you mean. When I was on placement in Newcastle, my supervisor was doing hand therapy with a guy who had a nerve injury. When I asked her what nerve it was, she had no idea! And when she looked it up in the file she couldn't remember where that nerve ran and what it innervated! That made me a bit worried.

The reason Sydney was my first preference is their Operation India program in 4th year, where they send students to different programs being developed all over India. You have to help train health workers and implement different strategies to help the target group. It's usually in India, but I think some years they've gone to Tonga or Bangladesh instead. I really want to work overseas in developing countries when I graduate so it's something I'm really excited about.

 

[hipsta_jess]

Hey, the thing about us thinking for ourselves came straight from the mouths of clinicians, I don't necessarily agree with it.
As for the UAI...so if it is purely based on number of places and distance to other areas...CSU should be even higher than us.

 

[White Rabbit]

Pray you don't have to do a shower Ax, lol, veeeeery uncomfortable.

LOL, OT's are a funny bunch

 

[hipsta_jess]

I say snaps to you nurses that do them every day :s Hopefully I don't have a surgical rotation any time soon.

 

[White Rabbit]

LOL, was just stiring, OTs and all Allied Health people are sweet! what do you guys do on surg rotations? won't have to do much showers on surg