Occupied

Our Roundtable Guest:  Tomeico is an occupational therapist in North Carolina and entrepreneur extraordinaire. She is the host of the Therapy Entrepreneurs and Leaders of Color podcast, owner of Fasion Consulting (a business coaching and consulting company for therapy entrepreneurs), an author of 3 books on entrepreneurship, and a business owner with over 17 years experience.    Talking Points Wha...

Session Title  “How Did I Get Here? One Occupational Therapist’s Search for Meaning”  Session Details (TW // sexual violence) The purpose of this session is to provide my personal perspective as a practitioner, educator, and researcher on the topics identified as the focus of this seminar series. In these roles, I have attempted to understand people as occupational beings. This quest has led me to...

Natalie has an amazing breadth of experience for such a young clinician. This ep we have a look at that experience and then funnel down into her interest and experience living and working with chronic pain.  Check out her work here: Also if you’re in the market for some gorgeously designed clinic posters for your workspace then check out  < < >> Look after yourself, look after others, and always k...

Today is a VERY special episode! Firstly I got the opportunity to talk with our WFOT President Samantha Shann. We explored her journey through the profession, How she got involved with WFOT, how she made it to the position of President and then we explore the upcoming WFOT Congress in Paris.  The upcoming congress in Paris is looking towards to being an amazing, unique celebration of diversity wit...

Our Roundtable Guest:Alondra is an occupational therapist in Bay Area California and currently, she provides services via Hippotherapy, which entails incorporating horses And utilizing the movement of the horse Within the treatment sessions. She has a keen interest in imposter syndrome given her own personal experience of it.  Talking Points What is imposter syndrome?  How does it manifest? Physic...

You may know Tailor best as @BecomingOT on instagram, an account she started to share the transition from “anxious OT student to growing practitioner”. Her passion for improving those around her and assisting people to learn from her experiences is infectious. But how did it get to this stage? How did she get to share her content with thousands of OT’s? How does she cope with modern day stressors...

Daniela Castro de Jong, Lecturer in Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Health, University of Canberra (Australia) & Georgia Pike-Rowney, Practitioner and researcher in the transdisciplinary space of music, community, education, health and wellbeing, Centre for Mental Health Research, The Australian National University  Session Title Doing music together as a shared occupation: a socio-altruistic mus...

I’m the first to admit that I never used the MOHO much in clinical practice for a number of reasons. Conversations with Ruth started to get me to revisit some of the thoughts I’d had for a long while.  We started with the basics exploring the model and then moved into a bit more of a critical analysis. Check our Ruth here: and check out her website and webinars here: https://www.themohoot.com Look...

Outcome measurement in Occupational Therapy – What are we scared of?  Dr. Danielle Hitch, Senior Lecturer in Occupational Therapy, Deakin University, Australia & Allied Health Research & Translation Lead, Western Health, Australia  Session Details: Outcome measurement is crucial to proving the effectiveness of occupational therapy, but remains scarce in many areas of practice. So what’s holding us...

Collin Hernandez loved working with his hands. Building things was a job that continued as a hobby. That was until he had a traumatic accident that severely compromised his ability to engage in the things he loves most. In this episode we explore the injury and his rehabilitation up to this point from an occupational perspective.  Check Collin out here:https://www.instagram.com/c_hernandez3/ Look...

Our Roundtable Guest:Tegan McKay is a provisional psychologist who owns The Mindful Hub and is also one half of the Strong Minds Club podcast. Her psychology background adds an important dynamic to the occupational therapy perspective of the rest of the roundtable.  This episode we are diving into the effects we have been experiencing recently due to the COVID-19 pandemic and “safer-at-home” restr...

Dr Nick Pollard is a senior lecturer in occupational therapy at Sheffield Hallam University, teaching occupational therapy students at undergraduate and post graduate level, and course leader of the MSc pre-registration programme. He was previously professional lead in occupational therapy, vocational rehabilitation and dietetics on an interim basis for 23 months, and before that team leader and r...

Understanding Meaningful Occupation and its Healing Qualities  Moses N Ikiugu, PhD, OTR/L, Professor and Director of Research, Occupational Therapy Department, University of South Dakota  Session Details In this seminar, we will discuss the following: – The nature of meaningful occupations – The difference between meaningful and psychologically rewarding occupations – The postulated healing proper...

OCCUPIED is proud to announce a partnership with the All About Occupation series of seminars being hosted by Rebecca Twinley from the University of Brighton. We will be bringing these seminars to you on the podcast and am SUPER stoked to have the very first one of the series with the phenomenal Karen Whalley Hammell!  About Karen Karen Whalley Hammell is Honorary Professor, Department of Occupatio...

A nice, short and sweet episode reflecting on the last 3 years of this podcast. So much work but for me personally its resulted in so much growth. Thankyou to everyone who’s been involved in the podcast in any and every small way. Heres to the next 3 years Look after yourself, look after others and always keep Occupied Brock@brockcookOTbrock.cook@me.comwww.occupiedpodcast.com

DURING THIS PODCAST TOPICS SUCH AS SUICIDE, SELF HARM AND MENTAL ILLNESS ARE DISCUSSED. IF THIS IS A TRIGGER OR MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE, LOOK AFTER YOURSELF AND DON’T FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO LISTEN.  In episode 098 I put out an episode about my personal experience with depression. Not long after that Erik (you will remember him from episode 039) messaged me expressing how much he related to the epis...

This episode I wanted to reflect on an idea that I’ve been playing around with for a few weeks and that’s the difference between Mental Health and Mental Illness. Having an understanding of the links between wellbeing and mental health is a skill that every clinician can take into just about every clinical practice area. This is an area and a concept that fits core with Occupational Therapy and is...

As requested! an expansion of Episode 009 – How Do Values Fit with OT Practice by having a chat about how I’ve used these concepts in practice. Looking at a very practical way of finding a person’s occupational needs which can then be used to guide the occupation based practice direction. Super keen to start the discussion an hear if other clinicians have used any values-based perspectives in Occu...

Samantha Bowen is an Occupational Therapist from Perth Australia who found her passion in the aged care sector.  Samantha started Acorn Network, an entrepreneurial venture aimed at promoting young leaders in the aged care sector by providing mentoring, support and growth services to individuals and companies. http://www.acorn-network.com.au/ Samantha has also just dropped her own podcast (The Grey...

A rather spontaneous recording whilst getting some vitamin D, sitting outside, and relaxing. You know what they say, strike while the iron is hot, so whilst thinking about how I utilised values and values assessments within and occupation-based practice context it seemed like the perfect time to put my thoughts on record….and then send them out to the world. A bit of a reflection on how I’ve used...

Dr Jessie Wilson is a former colleague of mine who now works at Western University in Canada. Her paediatric and mental health clinical background led her into her Ph. D. around an occupation based therapy project for young adults with autism. We discussed everything from previous episodes of Occupied, some of the marketing issues of the profession, some of the challenges between undergrad and gra...

Goals…..we’ve all heard of them and all been advised that we should be using them both personally and clinically….but why and how are we using them? Do we have a good understanding of how they work? Hear me out and I’ll see if I can make you think 😉 When I say how do you write a goal I bet this is what you think of: Specific  Measurable Attainable Realistic Time-bound ………….but why? I’m sure we’re...

Melissa LaPointe is a friend I’ve known for a number of years and I’ve watched her entrepreneurial journey building from her original passion area, Occupational Therapy and Women’s Health. Now she is an online entrepreneur, a women’s health advocate, a coach, a leadership consultant and a community builder! We went into some detail around therapist burnout and how we both have been through it and...

So in this episode, I explore some random reflections I’ve had after coming across the concept of “minimalism”. It started when I found a documentary on Netflix called Minimalism: A documentary about the important things which was the beginning of me diving down the minimalism rabbit hole. “Minimalism is a lifestyle that helps people question what things add value to their lives. By clearing the c...

This episode I delved into the world of the New Graduate Occupational Therapist!! I had the pleasure of sitting down with the one and only Dominic Lloyd-Randolfi to hear about his journey into Occupational Therapy including his involvement with www. NewgradOccupationalTherapy.com NewGradOT is an amazing blog resource for new graduates containing an amazing array of information with the aim of help...