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World OT Day - September 27th 2011
On the occasion of World OT Day on September 27th Croatian Association of Occupational Therapists is organizing a celebration party for all OT’s in Croatia.
October
Masterclass workshop ”KAWA model foundations and practical implementation in occupational therapy in Croatia”
Croatian Association of Occupational Therapists has organized a 3-day master class workshop ”KAWA model foundations and practical implementation in occupational therapy in Croatia”. Dr. Michael Iwama, associate professor from Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, University of Toronto, has shared his spirit, enthusiasm for OT profession and his “river”.
Dr. Michael Iwama has presented the KAWA model through Croatian lenses, enabled us to use it in Croatian context. This master class workshop has encouraged and/or enabled a lot of OT’s to get a new insight and to critically evaluate our theoretical knowledge, practical skills and finally our professional work.
September
Croatia became ENOTHE member - Croatian OT’s thirst for knowledge and the future of OT education in Croatia
As there is a need for development of occupational therapy education in Croatia based on ENOTHE Tuning process and in accordance with Minimum standards for education of OT’s, Croatian Association of Occupational Therapists is gathering information (curriculum content and implementation) and resources (partners, teachers) for establishing and developing new occupational therapy curriculum for Bsc, Msc and Phd level.
So, after positive vote of the annual General assembly of Croatian Association of Occupational Therapists, we have sent our application for ENOTHE membership. There are several reasons for doing this, but most important ones are:
- Unifying criteria for OT education in Croatia and Europe
- Quality assurance teaching
- Improving mobility of students
- Tuning and upgrading OT educational programmes.
ENOTHE has accepted our application and we become an ENOTHE member.
August
OT licensing and CPD process
Croatian Health professional chamber has issued work licences for registered occupational therapists. From July 29 2011, according to article 46. and 86. of the Law for Health Professions (Official Gazette NN 87/2009) only licensed occupational therapists can provide occupational therapy in Croatia. Licence is issued to occupational therapists for the period of 6 years, but they have to continuously work on their professional development (collect grades for participating on different courses, workshops, congresses approved by Committee for education and continuing training of Occupational therapist professional class in Croatian Health professional chamber).
July
Workshop „Documenting occupational therapy practice”
Occupational therapist professional class in Croatian Health professional chamber has organized workshop on documenting occupational therapy practice to promote importance of record keeping as well as informing and facilitation occupational therapists in Croatia to use Guidelines for documenting occupational therapy practice. Speakers at the workshop were Sasa Radic, Bsc., Ivana Klepo, Bsc,. Andreja Bartolac, Bsc., Jadranko Lisak, Bsc., Nevenka Markovic, Bsc., and Ivana Brus, Bsc. Participants of the workshop have been informed about current practice in OT documentation and the documentation approaches that OT’s use in health and social institutions. Also lecturers have provided written materials with examples of OT documentation.
June
Workshop “Sitting and positioning”
Bauerfeind Croatia in cooperation with Croatian association of occupational therapists has organized a workshop “Sitting and positioning”. Bart Van der Heyden, PT, Director of European Training and Education for The ROHO Group USA was a workshop lecturer.
June
Workshop “Introduction to Accessible Housing”
Being aware of the fact that today restrictions in active participation in daily activities, are mostly not a result of disability but rather of societal organization (Michael Oliver, 1990), Croatian association of occupational therapists has decided to organize 2-day practical workshop “Introduction to Accessible Housing”. Workshop lecturer was Kate Sheehan, OT, Msc, director of OT practice. Workshop has given us a chance to encourage the OT professionals, as well as the general public to think and act on the principles of universal design.
May
Annual general assembly
Due to some changes in posts of members of the Board, 2011 annual General assembly was in a way an electoral. Dubravko Jurisic, our former president has resigned due to professional and personal reasons. As we also had unfilled positions within Ethical board, elections for the new president and 2 posts in Ethical board had been on the agenda. Members of the Assembly have unanimously elected Sasa Radic for the new president of the association and Dubravko Jurisic and Mirjana Kucina (also former association president) as members of the Ethical board. Assembly has also:
· voted and accepted revisions of Ethical code (revisions were done in accordance with Codes of Ethics – COTEC Policy and Guidelines national Code of Ethics),
· decided to publish the Associations’ newsletter,
· voted on and accepted application for ENOTHE membership.
April
New promotional materials – COTEC Position papers in Croatian
Croatian association of occupational therapists has translated following COTEC documents into Croatian:
- COTEC Political statement "Occupational Therapists contribution to active ageing, health and well being in the older population”,
- COTEC Position Statement on ”Poverty and Social Exclusion”,
- COTEC Position paper on „The European Year of Volunteering 2011”.
Documents are and will be used for promotional, informational and educational purposes. Documents were sent to Serbian association and are available for COTEC secretariat.