Why choose the School of Society, Community and Health
Our Public Health courses rank 1st in their subject table for graduation prospects – outcomes (CUG, 2024)
The majority of our students graduate with an additional professional qualification that will gain them entry to an allied health or social services profession
Gain an accredited qualification in a sector where qualified professionals are in high demand
About the course
This practice-based course – where you complete over 1000 hours in placement settings - gives you the skills and knowledge you need to follow a rewarding career as an occupational therapist eligible to register with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) when you graduate.
Occupational therapy combines a range of areas including human sciences (anatomy physiology and psychology); sociology; pathology; learning disabilities; and mental health. On this course you gain a grounding across these fields as well as learning about professional values and conduct; the underpinning theories; and the research behind evidence-based practice.
You put your knowledge into practice through roleplay managed experiences and simulation with practical sessions that develop your skills in patient assessment treatment planning treatment interventions and the evaluation of their usefulness.
Over the length of the course you benefit from being in placements for a minimum of 1000 hours where you are supported and supervised to develop your skills.
Why choose this course?
- Learn from an experienced academic team of scientists and clinicians using modern well-equipped facilities including simulation suites
- Hone your developing skills in clinical placements part-time for your first and second years with full-time placements in your third year
- Benefit from our extensive network of supervised practice placements across a variety of NHS community voluntary and private service settings
- Study alongside physiotherapists and other healthcare students learning about each other’s roles. This helps you develop a strong professional identity as an occupational therapist while giving you a clear understanding of how your role contributes to the wider team
- Develop the attitudes and values as well as the communication skills to deliver care with the compassion dignity and respect expected of a professional occupational therapist
- Learn valuable transferable skills including research analysis communication critical thinking and leadership
Nursing and midwifery students will be eligible for additional support of at least £5,000 to help with living costs with funding from the NHS. The funding will be given to new and continuing degree-level students.
The funding comes as part of the government’s pledge to increase nurse numbers by 50,000 over the next five years.
You will receive at least £5,000 a year, with further funding available for eligible students:
- £1,000 for specialist disciplines
- £2,000 for childcare costs
- Exceptional Hardship Fund of up to £3,000.
The funding will not have to be repaid by recipients. You will also be able to continue to access funding for tuition and maintenance loans from the Student Loans Company.
with Professional Practice Year
This course has the option to be taken over four years which includes a year placement in industry. Undertaking a year in industry has many benefits. You gain practical experience and build your CV, as well as being a great opportunity to sample a profession and network with potential future employers.
There is no tuition fee for the placement year enabling you to gain an extra year of experience for free.
*Only available to UK/EU students.
with Foundation Year
A Degree with a Foundation Year gives you guaranteed entry to an Undergraduate course.
Whether you’re returning to learning and require additional help and support to up-skill, or if you didn’t quite meet the grades to pursue an Undergraduate course, our Degrees with Foundation Year provide a fantastic entry route for you to work towards a degree level qualification.
With our guidance and support you’ll get up to speed within one year, and will be ready to seamlessly progress on to undergraduate study at Bedfordshire.
The Foundation Year provides an opportunity to build up your academic writing skills and numeracy, and will also cover a range of subject specific content to fully prepare you for entry to an Undergraduate degree.
This is an integrated four-year degree, with the foundation year as a key part of the course. You will need to successfully complete the Foundation Year to progress on to the first year of your bachelor’s degree.
Why study a degree with a Foundation Year?
- Broad-based yet enough depth to give you credible vocational skills
- Coverage of a variety of areas typically delivered by an expert in this area
- Gain an understanding of a subject before choosing which route you wish to specialise in
- Great introduction to further study, and guaranteed progression on to one of our Undergraduate degrees
The degrees offering a Foundation Year provide excellent preparation for your future studies.
During your Foundation Year you will get the opportunity to talk to tutors about your degree study and future career aspirations, and receive guidance on the most appropriate Undergraduate course to help you achieve this; providing you meet the entry requirements and pass the Foundation Year.
What will you study?
Professional Identity
This unit will explore the nature of Professions, what defines a profession, professional values, codes of practice and professional regulation.
Recognise the values and differences between occupational therapy provision and profession in the UK and on a global platform.
Holistic Therapy In Practice
This unit will engage you in the practical application of your theoretical knowledge and practical skills in a work-based environment. You will reflect on your practice and consider how such reflection can be used to inform and develop your practice.
This unit provides the opportunity for you to undertake a 10 week (19 hours/week or 2.5 days / week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) practice placement in order that you may practice your clinical skills in a real world setting with feedback on your attainment of the professional standards expected of you.
This unit contributes to the 1000hrs of supervised practice placement experience required during the completion of the programme as stated by RCOT, Learning and development standards of Pre-reg Education (2019)
80% attendance is mandatory on your practice placement before any unit assessment can be completed.
Academic Skills For Therapists
This unit will support your transition into Higher Education study and develop the academic and study skills required to support your learning, progress and achievement throughout your course. You will develop your understanding of how you learn, how to manage and organise your study, using key academic study skills and some familiarity with assessment literacy. Information literacy, searching for and sourcing key information and accurately referencing this information will be practiced. Understanding the literature, recognising different forms of data and how it is presented will form a foundation for the further development of your research skills. The value of research for evidence informed care, the main research approaches and the research process will be introduced.
Sound academic skills influence practice, record keeping, numeracy and the oracy of clinical reasoning. Central to this will be your digital literacy skills and the growing use of health informatics in healthcare.
Developing Therapeutic Relationships
This unit is focused on analysing a therapeutic encounter by considering three main elements: therapist, patient/client/service user and therapeutic event. The unit aims to facilitate the development of your communication skills for building and maintaining therapeutic relationships required for effective practice.
Sciences Supporting Occupation
This unit examines the knowledge of the structure (Anatomy), function (Physiology) of the human body and psychology and sociology (including behavioural, cognitive, personality and mental disorders), that supports Occupation.
The unit will provide experiential practical opportunities to develop the skills of surface anatomy, movement analysis and psychological measurements of human and function to enable students to understand the impact of health and disability, occupational participation and well-being in a social context.
Holistic Factors Affecting Occupation
This unit aims to:
- Introduce the basis of Occupational Therapy practice through the concept of humans as occupational beings and the use of everyday occupations as a mechanism for therapeutic intervention within practice.
- Prepare you for your first substantive practice placement and equip you with the key skills, theories and evidence that you will need to safely and effectively engage with patients.
Enabling Therapy In Practice
This is your first practice unit at Level 5, within which you will start to take supervised responsibility for some or all of the following: assessment, treatment planning, treatment delivery and treatment evaluation to enable patients/clients/service users. This placement will engage you with a supported opportunity to practice your skills in the workplace.
This unit comprises of an 8 week (19 hours/week or 2.5 days/week, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) part-time placement.
This unit contributes to the 1000hrs of supervised practice placement experience required during the completion of the programme as stated by RCOT, Learning and development standards of Pre-reg Education (2019)
80% attendance is mandatory on your practice placement before any unit assessment can be completed.
Evidence Informed Therapy
This unit enables students to develop an understanding of the relationship between research, practice and policy to assure evidence based practice in therapies. Students will develop a critical understanding of research paradigms, the construction of research designs, the selection of different research methods, data collection and analysis skills, and the ethical issues involved in undertaking research. These skills will not only enhance your critique of evidence for practice but prepare you for your final year Therapies Project and further research you may engage with as a graduate.
Collaboration In Therapy Practice
This is your second practice unit at Level 5, within which you will continue to take supervised responsibility for some or all of the following: assessment, intervention planning, intervention delivery and intervention evaluation in collaboration with patient/client/service user and MDT. This placement will engage you with a supported opportunity for you to practice your skills in the workplace.
This unit comprises of a 10 week (19 hours/week or 2.5 days/week, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) part-time placement.
This unit contributes to the 1000hrs of supervised practice placement experience required during the completion of the programme stated by RCOT, Learning and development standards of Pre-reg Education (2019).
80% attendance is mandatory on your practice placement before any unit assessment can be completed.
Enabling Occupation
This unit examines students’ knowledge of the occupational therapy process, building on the introduction provided in Level 4 modules, and practice placement. It focusses on living well with long-term conditions experienced across the adult developmental stages of the lifecycle considering early middle and late adulthood, enabling students to gain knowledge and skills in assessment, intervention-planning and evaluation in relation to each stage . Students will study a range of physical and mental health conditions typically encountered across the adult stages of the lifecyle and examine their effect on occupational and social participation, at both population and individual levels. This unit will cover all aspects of living with long-term health conditions in children and adulthood, throughout the lifecyle.
Professional Reasoning In Occupational Therapy
This unit examines key theories and concepts around disability and barriers to participating in everyday occupations. This unit will develop your skills for equipment provision while exploring the use of equipment and adaptations as an intervention approach. You will use your developing knowledge of physical and psychological dysfunction adopting the holistic lens developed in your level 4 study to analyse what is required for occupational engagement. You will continue to use the ‘occupational therapy process’ to develop and consolidate skills in professional reasoning and decision making in order to formulate interventions.
Complexity In Therapy Practice
This is your first practice unit at Level 6, within which you will continue to take supervised but increased responsibility for some or all of the following: assessment, treatment planning, treatment delivery and treatment evaluation. This placement will provide you with a supported opportunity for you to practice your skills in the workplace with increasing proficiency and with service uses with multi-pathologies or complex therapy needs with guidance from your practice educator.
This unit comprises of an 8 week (full-time) placement.
This unit contributes to the 1000hrs of supervised practice placement experience required during the completion of the programme as stated by RCOT, Learning and development standards of Pre-reg Education (2019).
80% attendance is mandatory on your practice placement before any unit assessment can be completed.
Occupational Therapies Project
A critical understanding of the relationship between research, practice and policy underpins the development of evidence-based practice. In this unit you will prepare to undertake such research that informs policy, practice or the development of knowledge that defines your occupational therapy as a profession. Cognitive dissonance with an aspect of theory, practice or policy will provoke a systematic review of pertinent literature culminating in the articulation of researchable questions. You will justify research methods and methodology and engage with the research process as a guide for planning a future research study. You will also develop an understanding of research ethics, informed consent, debriefing, and GDPR.
Quality In Therapy Practice
This unit incorporates your Elective Placement, which has been chosen by you and allows you to explore working in a different healthcare environment to prior placements and/or working in more specialised practice in order that you can challenge your practice skills in readiness for graduate employment. The placement aims to provide you with the opportunity (and the support for) you to practice your skills in the workplace. Like your previous placements it contributes to the 1000hrs of supervised practice placement experience required during the completion of the programme as stated by RCOT, Learning and development standards of Pre-reg Education (2019).
This unit comprises of a 9 week (full-time) placement.
80% attendance is mandatory on your practice placement before any unit assessment can be completed.
Growth And Leadership In Therapies
This inter-professional unit examines skills, knowledge and strategies to promote and develop effective leadership qualities to work in partnership within diverse teams/agencies across professional and organisational boundaries.
This unit will develop critical insight and evaluation of individual professional development needs as a preparation for continuing professional development and future employment opportunities, both national and international.
Managing Complexity In Occupational Therapy
This unit prepares students for the effective transition from learner to autonomous practitioner, capable of being anticipatory to the needs of people and populations experiencing complex physical and/or mental health conditions; recognising and managing the needs of patients/clients/service users with two or more chronic conditions that collectively have an adverse effect on health status, function, or quality of life and that require complex healthcare management, decision-making, or coordination.
Through opportunities to appraise best practice guidelines, relevant research and your own reflections on your experiences of the multidisciplinary team (MDT), you will begin to build an evidence based understanding of management of the complex patient/client/service user, so growing your efficacy as a safe and well-informed therapist, contributing within a MDT. This unit will cover critical professional reasoning of professional assessment and intervention techniques for the bio-psycho-socially complex client with potentially many co-mutliple-morbidities.
Collaborative Therapies
Working collaboratively is a key health profession skill and is the focus of this unit. You will engage in simulated interdisciplinary practice with other health care professionals and enquiry based learning activities focused on practice-based interdisciplinary scenarios.
The skills and values for health and social care practitioners to work in collaboration to ensure seamless client focused delivery are explored. Students’ ability to use person-centred professional reasoning and multi-disciplinary care planning approaches will be developed.
How will you be assessed?
The assessment strategy utilised by the School is rooted in the notions of assuring professionalism competence and employability described within SOPs. The assessments for these four curriculum themes seek to address your development in key knowledge and understanding skills and abilities required for each. All assessments will be communicated to you via your assessment handbook with submission dates and times a clear explanation of the task and the standards of performance against which you will be graded when you undertake the task. Following your assessment you will be provided with a grade (which will have been moderated i.e. checked by another marker and/or an external examiner) and individualised feedback and developmental feed-forward comments.
Careers
An occupational therapist is trained to work in both health and social care settings in the private as well as public sector and is equipped for employment globally. As an occupational therapist you can take on a broad range of roles in the NHS local authorities charities industry schools private practice voluntary sector
and government agencies. You can specialise in working with children adults or older people across the lifespan and pursue a career as a practitioner researcher manager lecturer or consultant.
For further information on careers on occupational therapy please visit the websites of the Royal College of Occupational Therapists (RCOT) and NHS Careers
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