Speaker 1 

Welcome everybody to our podcast. It’s an absolute pleasure of mine to introduce you to three fabulous Occupational Therapists from across the southwest, and today’s topic is leadership across the career span, exploring the value of clinical and leadership split placement models. So I would like to introduce Jo, a OT and a service manager. I’d love to introduce Rachel, also an OT and professional lead for AHP’s and last, but by no means least, Emma, one of our student OT’s. So I’m going to start with the first question to Rachel. Rachel, give us a little bit of background to this conversation. 

Speaker 2 

Hi. Thanks, Gina. Well, probably as everybody else is experiencing getting enough clinical placements to meet that demand from our HEI’s and also be thinking about our future workforce is a real challenging space to be in. So we’ve been trying to look how creatively we can be with those placements. Think about different placement models and as somebody in a leadership role, I wanted to still be contributing to those placements. So having supported some clinical ad leadership placement, there was an opportunity to think about how could we use a a leadership element and for this placement, which made it a little bit more unusual, we approached NHS England to see whether they could help support us with a leadership element of replacement. So it was clinical leadership. But across 2 very different organisations, and probably that’s a good sort of place to pause there cause that was where we started our journey. 

Speaker 1 

That sounds fantastic. And how? How do you think things could be in the future? What could things really be like for this placement model? 

Speaker 2 

I think it’s one of these ones that has opportunity to expand, Gina, but I do think it does need some really careful planning so that it makes sure that it’s really supportive of the student going on placement. This is what we need for scaffolding around the placement to make sure it’s going to be the right level of support and be balanced for the student coming into that placement. So I think for me there was quite a lot of close working with the HEI with which was Bournemouth University to really in the preparation so. I think there is real opportunity to carry on doing things differently, but I also think you have to get that planning bit right as well. 

Speaker 1 

Lovely. Thank you. And just last from you for a moment, leadership in this space, could you just give a few professional reflections on the importance, both you and I, we didn’t have leadership placements when we did this, why is it so important now? 

Speaker 2 

Yeah, it’s such a good question, Gina. So you’re right. There was nothing like a leadership placement and I think you, I see a lot of students coming on to placement who feel that they need to be 100% clinical. But actually if we’re going to be effective leaders of the future, we need to have students who have a sense of the bigger picture, who can articulate their ideas, who can think about how do I link those strategic ambitions of an organisation to what we want to change in our service, so it’s about getting people to have that safe space to spread their g and realise that leadership isn’t for X number of years into your career. 

Speaker 1 

Lovely, Thank you. Joe, do come in? 

Speaker 3 

Can I hop in on that. Gina. Ohh sorry. I was just going to hop in and say I also didn’t have any leadership placement or experience and I feel as OT’s were really well placed to naturally be leaders. I think Emma, you’ve reflected that that leadership doesn’t need to come with a title, you know we actually lead naturally. But yeah, I think we feel ill equipped, often having not had that as part of our experience at a at a student point in our career and so you can end up like me sort of 20 years into a career feeling ill equipped for leadership, but actually being put in a position to lead I think to put that in at an early stage as part of your training is key really definitely key for the future. 

Speaker 1 

I agree, and I think there are so many more fantastic opportunities for OTS and AHPS now out there that we really need to start thinking of a much broader possibilities of careers right from the get go, don’t we? And I guess on that point, Jo, I was wondering about what you thought the hidden wins were around these placements and focusing on leadership at this stage. 

Speaker 3 

Although a huge numbers of wins for us actually, ones that I hadn’t, I hadn’t considered at the outset, I mean, I had some apprehensions about taking on this kind of placement especially not having a good working knowledge of NHS England and it being across different organisations as Rachel said. But I think the real hidden wins were those links and the networks beyond our own organisation and being able to just lift your head up out of the everyday out of the clinical that we are doing to be able to see strategically where do we fit in the system. And Emma was brilliant at bringing across and making those connections, and even taking things back. You know, we would bring issues that were happening for us as a service and she would be sat in in meetings and organisations where she could with organisations that she could raise these issues in real time, giving us connections with others that we would never have had access to, had she not have been sat in those rooms. So it was incalculable how, how helpful it was for us as a service. 

Speaker 1 

Fantastic. Thank you, Jo. Emma, coming across to you now, really tell me a bit more about the value for the student in this space and the AHP community. Love to hear your thoughts. 

Speaker 4 

Well, so I think you know you’ve already talked about so many of the things that I’ve found valuable myself and I think coming up to a placement, it’s always a really apprehensive moment and for me, I was especially worried cause it was a three month placement, so I was thinking how am I going to manage that being autistic, what it’s going to be like? So when we started looking at split placements, that was a massive win for me in terms of being able to still get the clinical mileage in with those three days clinically, but having that it’s a couple of days to work on a project gave me stretch in some other areas that I was interested in like leadership and but I didn’t feel like I was missing out on any of those aspects of learning, and I could really make the most of that opportunity. There’s so much buzz around placements from students, you know, wherever you been, what have you learned. And I wanted to also still be part of that and it enabled me to do that. I think thinking about it for AHP’s I’ve come also as a career changer, so arriving on my first day, like lugging my baggage of my past life and career with me, thinking, Oh my gosh, where is this gonna fit? Where am I gonna put it, is anyone gonna trip over it. But I think very quickly, all of that integrating that you guys have spoken about started just happening naturally and I saw that I can actually open all of my past career experience and use it here and start to see how it relates to my professional work as an OT and how those skills can be integrated in and I think also being it was a real big win that I got to work with people who were part time, who maybe wouldn’t have had access to learning from students, cause I can see that everybody has so much, gifting their time to have a student and imparting that knowledge that they’ve developed over time is so valuable for us because we’ve been waiting to be part of this AHP community and when we step out on placement on the first day, it’s like it’s the massive opportunity to be part of that world that we’ve chosen to be part of for the first time, we’re actually on the floor with you all, listening, hearing and so getting access to everybody in some way. I think these kind of placement models open things out and give some flexibility even within that scaffolding you said that was important. 

Speaker 1 

I loved the fact that you called it a call to adventure when we were talking about this earlier, and I just wondered who the adventure really was for the most your supervisors or for you, Emma? Or really, if it’s just a joint adventure, just like one of those films. 

Speaker 4 

I think it was a joint, do you think it was a joint adventure? I really felt like I wasn’t just the student there. I felt like we were together, and you were sharing all of you and my supervisor in NHS England we were all sharing, you know, challenges or career insights and I felt like we were learning and growing together and I felt like that was really really powerful and it’s it reminds me of a quote from Mark Griffiths, who’s the Pro Vice Chancellor for UWE, and he said something about dynamic leaders as someone who doesn’t lead just because there’s a leader in their role, but they take ownership of the areas of influence that they have and also they measure their own leadership abilities and not based on their skills to lead, but their ability to empower others and I think that’s what I saw in all of you and what I’ll definitely take forward in this. 

Speaker 1 

Thank you, Emma. I’m just gonna bring you now to some final words and reflections, because those 10 minutes have whizzed by. So I’m gonna ask Rachel, then Jo and then you, Emma, to give me two words that sum up this great experience. 

Speaker 2 

Right. Absolutely awesome. 

Speaker 1 

Thank you, Jo. 

Speaker 3 

Ohh two only two, it was a great adventure. 

Speaker 1 

Lovely. And the last words go to you, Emma. 

Speaker 4 

Ohh excited about AHP leaders in the future. 

Speaker 1 

Thank you, Emma. Thank all of you for great conversation today and I think it’s really inspiring and we look forward to hearing how other people take up their challenge and follow you on very similar adventures. Thank you guys. 

Speaker 2 

Ohh, thanks Gina. Yeah, thank you. 

Speaker 

OK.