Almost 100 passionate secondary school students participated in the Elite Occupational Therapist Taster Programme.
Prof. Hector Tsang (Cally Kwong Mei Wan Professor in Psychosocial Health, Chair Professor of Rehabilitation Sciences and Head of RS) kindly shared his words of wisdom with the participants in the opening ceremony.
Ms Josephine Wong (Senior Clinical Associate) instructed the participants to make splints.
The student ambassadors introduced the Paediatric Occupational Therapy Teaching Laboratory.
Participants tried out the robotic training equipment at the Tam Wing Fan Rehabilitation Service Centre (Occupational Therapy).
Elite Occupational Therapist Taster Programme (EOTTP) 2021
Occupational Therapy Student Ambassador (OTSA) was established in 2014, and this year marks its 7th anniversary. OTSA aims to promote OT profession to the general public through various activities. With secondary school students being one of the major promotional targets, RS of PolyU joined hands with OTSA again in organising the Elite Occupational Therapist Taster Programme (EOTTP) for students’ early exposure to the OT profession.
The 4th EOTTP was successfully held at PolyU on 10 August 2021 and attended by nearly 100 passionate participants from around 50 elite secondary schools in Hong Kong. It was our honour to have invited Prof. Hector Tsang (Cally Kwong Mei Wan Professor in Psychosocial Health, Chair Professor of Rehabilitation Sciences and Head of RS) to give an inspiring opening speech, which marked the start of the event.
In order to provide the participants with a holistic perspective of the roles of occupational therapists, we prepared an array of activities, including a theory-learning class, a splinting workshop, and visits to teaching laboratories and the Rehabilitation Clinic. Thanks to the generous support from RS faculties, the participants were able to have a comprehensive understanding of the OT profession including OT theories and practices.
After the opening ceremony, Mr Tony Wong (Clinical Associate) taught the theory-learning class in which he lectured on OT theories, concepts and models. In the group study session that followed, participants tried to conduct simple case analyses by applying their newly learnt theories and models, so as to experience briefly the process of assessing patients.
The splinting workshop was conducted by Ms Josephine Wong (Senior Clinical Associate), Ms Bonnie Jim (Clinical Associate), Mr Kin-Chung Tang (Clinical Associate) and Mr Tony Wong. The four clinical associates demonstrated to the participants the steps of making hand splints, and instructed them to make a protective mallet finger splint by themselves.
During the teaching lab tour, participants had a chance to visit the state-of-the-art teaching facilities, thereby deepening their understanding of various types of OT specialties. The visit to the Rehabilitation Clinic was led by Mr Johnny Lam (Clinical Associate), in which participants had a glance at the environment where occupational therapists worked and their different treatment media.
Through this successful one-day programme, it is anticipated that the secondary school students could gain a better insight into the OT expertise and our OT undergraduate programme. Meanwhile, the service period of the 7th OTSA has come to an end. We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has supported us over the past year. Please stay tuned for the coming OTSA events!
