This course (previously known as Health Through Occupation) gives you license to register and practice as an occupational therapist with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).
It is ideal for graduates of any subject who wish to gain both a professional and academic qualification and start a career in this challenging and highly rewarding field.
You will explore occupational health through our innovative problem-based learning approach, with an emphasis on practical application of skills and knowledge. Through this balance of theory and practice experience you will graduate a capable and confident occupational therapist.
Our high quality teaching and research are renowned, and have an applied focus. We have established strong links with specialist practice educators to ensure the provision of support and guidance both within the university and in practice.
Successful completion of the professional elements of the programme leads to the award of a postgraduate diploma in Occupational Therapy.
Course structure
This intensive programme runs over 45 weeks per year, for two years. Your time on the course will be balanced between campus-based study and clinical practice.
Sessions are held in small groups, they are interactive, integrated, self-directed, and focus on problem-solving, to examine real-life situations. The use of problem-based learning is considered crucial to students' fast attainment of masters-level standards, and for critical evaluation.
Other learning experiences are arranged according to the need of the problem; these may be lectures, practical sessions, skills classes, debates or seminars. Most importantly, all subjects are integrated around the problems.
Our postgraduate programmes are taught by a wide variety of methods – small active learning groups, seminars, action learning sets, PBL, lectures, self-directed literature searches.
Understanding the relationship between occupation and human health and wellbeing is also explored through student participation in a variety of activities such as cooking, craft, horticulture, performing arts and pottery.
Assessments allow for individual feedback in essential professional skills including written critique, report writing, team working, presentation skills, and verbal/written presentation of intervention.
Areas of study
You will examine topics such as:
• theories of occupation and occupational science (causes of occupational problems)
• occupation related to population health
• clinical reasoning
• occupational therapy process (assessment, treatment, and evaluation)
• occupational therapy skills (creative, productive, leisure and daily living)
• research methods and professional issues.
Syllabus
Year 1 modules:
Human Occupation (including two-week beginner practitioner placement)
Assessing Occupational Capacities
Novice Practitioner (practice placement)
Maximising Occupational Capacities
Intermediate Practitioner (practice placement)
Evaluating Occupational Therapy
Year 2 modules:
Occupational Therapy: Teams
Diverse Practice (practice placement)
Occupational Therapy: Settings
Competent Student Practitioner (practice placement)
Occupational Therapy: Consumers
Achieving Best Practice
Research project
Facilities
There are a range of skills rooms which are equipped so that students can learn and practise practical skills with each other prior to working with patients and clients.
Human Movement Laboratory:
The high-tech Human Movement Laboratory is used widely in teaching and research for students in the school of health professions studying physiotherapy, occupational therapy and podiatry, and is also used for commercial consultancy.
In the lab you will use the latest technology to measure and assess all aspects of human movement, joints, muscles, soft tissue structure and nerves. The laboratory has state-of-the-art equipment for conducting cardio-pulmonary investigations including Cosmed metabolic system and spirometry.
Exchange
The student exchange programme is for occupational therapy students registered on the Occupational Therapy (Pre-Registration) MSc at the University of Brighton, Occupational Therapy MSc students at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse (UWC) and Occupational Therapy BSc students at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen (RGU).
There are two options:
• Host option (year one)
• Travel option (year two)
First year students host visiting students during their Maximising Occupational Capacities module which runs from February to April each year. During the second year students have the option of visiting either UWC or RGU during their spring break.
Please see the website for more information
https://www.brighton.ac.uk/courses/study/occupational-therapy-pre-reg-msc-pgcert-pgdip.aspx Our philosophy
The pre-registration occupational therapy programmes incorporate the experience of doing and making, in order to engage analyse and develop skill in therapeutic media. We have creativity studios for cooking, ceramics, crafts, and performing arts, and we have developed gardens for the practice of horticulture.
Around the world, many academic courses in occupational therapy are losing this aspect of their education, to give over more time to ‘theory’, but here at Brighton we believe that it is vital to retain these embodied learning experiences – which utterly link theory and practice - as they are indeed central to the understanding of the true essence and potential of occupation.
Recent research has revealed the connection between skilled hand use and the development of thinking. As one student, who could not imagine a course without these sessions, said “how can we learn about doing without doing?” These classes are central to the philosophy of our occupational therapy education at Brighton and they have become one of its hallmarks.
Careers and Employability
After professional registration with the HCPC graduates are eligible to take up opportunities in health and social care, in the NHS, social services, and the private sector. There are now many new and exciting possibilities for occupational therapists nationally and worldwide.
Occupational therapists work in an ever-widening range of mental health and physical disability settings including acute hospitals, long-term rehabilitation, social care, local communities, schools, factories, residential homes, institutions for older or more profoundly disabled people, voluntary organisations and prisons.
Completion of the Occupational Health (Pre-Registration) MSc will also prepare you for further study at MPhil and PhD level if you wish to continue pursuing an academic path.
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