Occupational therapy skills session
How do you support students in acquisition of clinical skills and accessing learning opportunities that meet their individual needs? Involving a range of other professionals, patients, clients and carers?
Designing a student pathway
If you are revisiting this section, consider:
  • How many pathways have you/your team or your students designed?
  • If you haven’t, what impact does this have on facilitating student learning in your practice area?
  • If you have, are there any more you could design? Utilise this time to design a new one.
Planning a pathway
  • Consider opportunities for students to follow your patient/client group through the healthcare system.
  • Get students to design them with patients and staff input.
  • Provide examples in your student package so that a selection can be followed during placements.
  • Get students to base their learning contracts on pathways.
Integrating care pathways
When planning to follow a patient pathway, students should ‘think integration’ how the pathway interlinks professions and the ways in which they work together.
  • Think: health/illness - what is the nature of the illness/condition?
  • Think: patient journey/care pathway - where will the health/social care journey take the person?
  • Think: discipline - who is involved?
  • Think: purpose - what is the reason for involvement?
  • Think: practice - what are the specific interventions?
  • Think: interconnection - what collaborative relationships exist? Do services/interventions merge?
  • Think: reflection - what does this mean for the patient/client, for the carer, the practitioner, the service and for me?
Example of a palliative care pathway
Student responsibilities:
  • provide reflective accounts of following the pathway, what they have learnt and how it relates to their placement
  • evidence of following the pathway can link to their learning contract and assessments.