RCOT's Career Development Framework

What is the Career Development Framework?

The career development framework helps Occupational therapists meet the needs of people, families and carers, who use their services. It provides a structure to help OT's with their career learning and development within their profession. The framework has been designed to be relevant to everyone and is intended to be used in all sectors of occupational therapy.

Career development wheel.

The career development wheel is a really good tool for occupational therapists to use as a self assessment tool to identify what level they are currently and gives opportunity to think about what they need to develop on to progress to the next level and put some actions into plan.

I have filled in the wheel myself below:

• Professional Practice - I have put myself as level 1 for this pillar as in my previous job as an operations manager, I dealt with a lot of sensitive data so data protection had to be followed accordingly. A bit part of this role was communicating with other teams as well as attending mangers meetings, delegating work, respecting others and ensuring the team work well and represented the department appropriately.

• Facilitation of Learning - This is also a level 1 for me. Again, to bring it back to my work experience, I always sought to learn from colleagues and also to teach others. I was always searching for ways that I could make processes better and more efficient. Team meetings would give the perfect opportunity to reflect on the week and bring up any queries or ideas to share with the rest of the team. There was also the opportunity take part in training courses that would improve our skill and knowledge in certain areas, one example would be an intermediate excel course. A course more related to OT would be a first aid course I attended.

• Leadership - I am almost level 1 I think. I was a manager of a small team in my old job and therefore a lot of the sub points that make up this level are things that I have either done or can do. Since I have not yet worked in OT, I cannot tick myself as level 1. I am hoping that perhaps after my placement practice in March 2023 I will be able to tick this one off!

• Evidence Research and Development - I am not yet at level 1 for this pillar, however I have started looking evidence based practice and research as part of my Skills for Digital Health module. This has given me the foundations to start building my skills on this subject so I hope that I can say that I am level 1 by the end of my first year of my degree.