10 reasons why you should blog as an occupational therapy student!
- Connecting with the wider allied health community. Including reading expert blogs, consumer blogs and reading community group discussion regarding various mental health interventions.
- Keeping Updated with Flexibility- getting questions answered in real time by experts in the field which helped guide your clinical reasoning. For example, I try my best to respond to clinician questions that come my way regarding BPD and their clients.
- Sharing of resources, knowledge, opinions
- Becoming a self-directed learner: Blogging can be a way to express and affirm your identity as an occupational therapist.
Develop your critical analysis thinking skills - Developing your communication and confidence: For me, I struggle to verbalise my knowledge at times. But with my blogs, I use them as my mental database. I am much more confident and quicker in retrieving and articulating information that I have discussed on my blog.
6. Set learning objectives and goals for yourself. What is it that you want your blog to achieve.
7. Self-reflection: be vulnerable, share your weaknesses, and be authentic
8. Try not to over think it. The best blogs I have written have been the pieces I have just let the words come out.
9. Find your passion and purpose! Write about things you love and not for the purpose of making extra money.
10. Keep persistent: It took about 6 months for OT for BPD to get off the ground. I had so many ideas. So many drafts of blogs. But once I defined by objectives and goals and took that step of courage, I went from a couple of readers to posts that can reach 25,000 reads. All of which I value so much!
Key Principles
– Be passionate and compassionate.
– Boundaries: Both personal and other’s confidentiality.
– Set ground rules and disclosures around what services you do and do not provide.
– Nothing replaces 1:1 supervision
– Decide if you want your blog to be open to others OR are their restrictions on who can access what you write
– Find other avenues to vent… unless it serves a greater purpose.
References
Image:
https://pcdnetwork.org/resources/guide-to-blogging-for-peace-and-social-change/
Garrity, M. K., Jones, K., Vanderzwan, K. J., de La Rocha, A. B., & Epstein, I. (2014). Integrative review of blogging: implications for nursing education. The Journal of nursing education, 53(7), 395. doi:10.3928/01484834-20140620-01
Loved this!
Thankyou 🙏🏻💚