124 – Lessons from a Career in Occupational Therapy - a podcast by Brock Cook

On October 15th 2021 I was honoured to be asked to give a short guest talk to the graduating class from Central Queensland University. The topic was left up to me and so I thought about what I would want to know if I was back in their shoes, about to step into the world as an OT for the very first time. So here it is, my lessons from a career in OT.







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Transcript







Brock Cook 0:02G'day all and welcome to another episode of occupied this episode I absolutely love I was honored to be asked to give a short presentation for the graduating class of Central Queensland University. Today, actually, and they left the topic up to me and after a bit of thought bit of what should I talk about a bit of freaking out, I developed this presentation of lessons from a career in occupational therapy. G'day, my name is Brock Cook, and welcome to occupied. In this podcast we're aiming to put the occupation in occupational therapy, we explore the people, topics, theories and underpinnings that make this profession so incredible. If you're new here, you can find all of our previous episodes and resources at occupied podcast.com. But for now, let's roll the episode. Alright, so yeah. Hi, thank you, I was absolutely flattered to be asked to come and talk to you guys. This morning. When I was first asked, the topic was left really broad, which is fine with me. But I started thinking about what I would have liked to hear when I was graduating many, many moons ago. And I started thinking about well, what if I was able to sort of, I guess, restart my career, but keep all of the the knowledge and stuff that I've gathered over these many years? What if I could do it again, but with my current learnings intact, and I think that's where I'm going to try and distill some of that down for you guys today. And hopefully, there's something that that you guys can can take out of it. So I'm going to try and present at least some of the major lessons that I've taken from a career in occupational therapy, which is still the best career option, in my opinion. So that's excellent. So one of the first lessons commonly referred to as outcomes razor, for those of you into a bit of philosophy is generally that the simplest explanation is usually the best one. And there's a little bit more to it than that. One thing not to get confused is that the easiest solution is the best one. But what I would like to really highlight is that the the main component of outcomes razor is to try and make sure that more you're making choices and decisions that using as fewer assumptions as you possibly can. And when I'm referring to this, I'm thinking about with the clients that you guys are going to work with. This key concept to me, was really important with regards to interviewing and analyzing interviews. So it taught me that I need to be continually working on my own self awareness that I'm not consciously or subconsciously filling in gaps of the person's story of their experience, that I'm not passing any judgment on their situations that I'm being able to come to a conclusion with as minimal assumptions as I possibly can. And I'll give you an example of this from earlier in my career. I was working with a lady on an acute inpatient Ward, mental health ward. And she just come in we were sitting in ward round. And she was telling us her story. And she told us that she back in the day used to...

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