In your initial one-to-one meetings, we will go through the Electronic Trinity Student Profile (Nolan, 2011; 2014), which is an assessment that will allow you to identify specific areas of college life that you would like to work on with your OT. This enables you and your OT to collaboratively decide on how to address areas using the approaches outlined in 'What Can my OT help me with?’
You choose how you want meetings to work. You can either meet an OT over a short period to address a specific issue, or you can meet more regularly with your OT for ongoing support in engaging in your student life. Within your meetings, we use the Person-Environment-Occupation Model (Law et al., 1996), to identify possible barriers to engaging in your day-to-day activities, and to identify ways to fully engage in your student role.
As appropriate the OT may recommend connecting with other college services, such as college health, student counselling, or your college tutor.
The approach used by Occupational Therapists within the Disability Service was developed by Dr. Clodagh Nolan in the Discipline of Occupational Therapy in conjunction with the Director of the DS and has been developed, refined, and researched over the last 15 years. For more information on the ongoing research behind the approach and the use of Occupational Therapy in higher education, please contact Dr. Nolan at [email protected].
