Starting work at the height of the pandemic: Band 5 Occupational Therapist Katie Horwood

AHP Day falls on Wednesday 14 October. We caught up with some of our AHP staff to find out more about their role.

Katie Horwood started working with the Milton Keynes Home 1^st Occupational Therapy Team in June.

It was during the height of lockdown.

Given that the whole team couldn’t be together due to social distancing advice, , this was hardly the introduction to a new role that any student fresh out of university could have anticipated.

But Katie, 21, took it all in her stride – made easier by having completed her second-year placement with the team - and on 14 October will be celebrating AHP Day as it means she’ll be able to showcase what she and her fellow professionals are able to do.

She says: “Initially it was quite daunting. I had just completed my degree at university and quickly went into a new band 5 role”.

“However, there was the added factor of my team not being able to continually provide in-person support due to the Covid situation, therefore a new reliance on phone or video support and the added element of wearing PPE including masks to see patients. 

“However, it encouraged me to quickly develop my confidence and my independence. And given I was still able to see patients, albeit in PPE, it made me appreciate my role more and I know patients appreciated seeing me even if I was wearing PPE.”

She adds: “This situation has made it slightly more difficult to communicate with and get to know my team, however this means I’ve perhaps been encouraged to become more independent as a practitioner earlier than would have been normal.

“Given I work in a community team I was aware I may have to work more independently compared to an inpatient setting. However, I think I’ve learnt a lot quicker and have developed my confidence more because of the situation. In other words, I’ve got to just get on with it, though I know my managers and the team are always only a phone call away.”

Katie comes from an NHS family with a father who’s an Orthotist so it was perhaps natural she would gravitate towards one of the AHP professions. Initially she contemplated a career in Speech and Language Therapy, but after shadowing an OT friend of her father’s she realised this was the role for her.

“I saw how complex and beneficial the OT role was. I was seeing the OT working with the patient rather than on the patient to help them engage in whatever was meaningful to them. I realised this was what I wanted to do,” she says.

She studied Health and Social Care as a BTEC before going to Oxford Brookes to study an Occupational Therapy degree.

This included a 10-week placement with the team during her second year. She loved the experience.

She says: “It was such a positive experience within the team and I built up really good connections with team members. I even kept in touch with some of them after I finished my placement and they provided me with resources and ongoing support.

“I realised then that working in the community was what I wanted to do rather than working in a hospital, so when this role came up on NHS Jobs app I was overjoyed as I wasn’t expecting it.

“I thought they would only have Band 6 roles in community OT and not Band 5 roles because of the complexity and challenge the role presented. For me it was the challenge I wanted and since I’ve been in the role it’s been a massive growth process both personally and professionally. It’s really built up my confidence.”