OT Volunteer Part 2

Hello, I am Niamh Allum, an Occupational Therapist with an interest in sustainable practices in healthcare. I currently work within rehabilitation, however in my previous role I worked for a sustainable transport charity looking at encouraging active travel to schools and workplaces. As an avid cyclist I have always looked to ways as to how I can integrate my role as a therapist with that of being a cyclist, and this led me to discovering the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare (CSH) in 2015. I have used the resources on the CSH website within my workplace and to help educate people I work with in how to make positive, sustainable changes to their rehabilitative journey.

Over the next 6 months I will be working with the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare and OT Susnet as an OT Sustainability Volunteer. My aim in this role is to develop the online resources for OT Susnet and also post content online for practitioners and students interested in integrating sustainable methods into everyday clinical practices. The social media content on the Facebook and Twitter accounts will hopefully provide followers with quick access to resources, and the ability to share these resources easily online.

One of my hopes of the project is that we are able to find more people within the field of Occupational Therapy who may have an interest in sustainability but are unsure as to how they can integrate such practices into their day job, and provide them the resources and network of other like minded individuals to share good practice. We are looking to develop the resources to enable first time visitors to be signposted to resources that give an overview of sustainability issues in occupational therapy with examples of how these issues can be tackled. We are also looking to provide resources for practitioners and students that are quick and easy to integrate into their often time constrained roles.

Are you an Occupational Therapist interested in sustainability? What types of resources would you find beneficial to enable you to find out more? Please get in contact to share your thoughts and ideas!