Enhancing occupational therapy students’ experiences of resilience through co-curricular programming

Umeda, C.; Thompson, R., & Walker, M. (2022) Enhancing occupational therapy students’ experiences of resilience through co-curricular programming, SIS Quarterly Practice Connections, 7(4).

Strengths-based approaches are gaining prominence across occupational therapy practice settings to guide client assessment and intervention. However, there is little evidence of applying strengths-based approaches to support occupational therapy practitioners’ (OTPs’) own professional development or to prepare occupational therapy students for future clinical practice. Strengths-based approaches include shifting perceptions of characteristics typically seen as deficits to strengths, promoting self-awareness of individual strengths and capacities, and harnessing community and contextual resources (Dunn et al., 2013). In this article we describe a resilience program for MSOT students that illustrates how strengths-based approaches can be utilized to support student well-being.