Hello,
I'm an exchange student coming to USYD to complete my master's in Occupational Therapy.
I will have to choose 5 courses among these electives:
OCCP 5187 Falls Prevention with Older People
OCCP 5235 Stroke Rehabilitation
OCCP 5245 OT in Learning and Co-ord Difficulties
OCCP 5246 OT in Work Injury Prevention and Rehab
OCCP 5247 Mental Health Interventions
OCCP 5248 People with Intellectual Disability
OCCP 5249 Professional Elective- General
OCCP 5250 OT in Hand and Upper Limb Rehabilitation
Do you guys have any recommendations based on your experience with these courses?
Thank you so much!
- Falls prevention: Don't know anyone who's done it
- Stroke Rehab: I haven't done it, but it's an online subject. This is what the students did sem1 2016: You are assigned a tutor/mentor, and are given a real life client who has had a stroke. You work with the client setting goals and achieving these goals, liaising with your mentor for assistance.
- OT in Learning and Co-ord Difficulties: I haven't done it, but I think it's a school based paeds subjects from my knowledge. I think for one of the assessments you find a primary school aged child and perform a variety of assessments with them.
- OT in Work Injury Prevention and Rehab: I haven't done it, it's an Occ Rehab subject. From my knowledge one of the assignments is going out to a company and performing a workplace assessment with them.
- Mental Health Interventions: I loved this subject. The assessment tasks consisted of weekly quizzes and an open book exam based on a case study. Some of the topics include: Recovery/Recovery oriented practice, learning about the mental health services/OT roles, person based interventions, occupation based interventions, environment based interventions, suicide and self-harm, de-escalation, advocacy, drug and alcohol + others.
- People with intellectual disability: I didn't enjoy the first half, but I enjoyed the second half of this semester. One of the assessments is you're assigned a real life case study, and you develop goals with them/work with them to achieve the goals. Some of the topics include: learning about the health system, empowerment, advocacy, person centred approaches, active support, skill development, positive support, young children --> school years --> transition into adulthood --> end of life supports.
- General: I wasn't offered this as an undergrad
- Upper Limb: I didn't do this . From my understanding you make weekly splints which are assessed.
I have the 2016 unit descriptions if you want, although i assume you already have the updated descriptions. If you want more info on them I can give/get some more for you. But really, just think about what you see yourself doing in a few years, what are your interests. If you enjoy neuro then maybe you'll enjoy stroke, upper limb and falls prevention. If you enjoy paeds then learning/coord and intellectual disability would be a good combination. Hope that helped