Jessica Tan
Elain Koh
Dear friends and colleagues,
On behalf of the Organising and Scientific Committees, we would like to welcome you to the 8th National Occupational Therapy Conference (NOTC), organised by the Singapore Association of Occupational Therapists (SAOT). Over the years, the annual NOTC has grown steadily to be an event that brings together the profession from Singapore and around the region to enhance knowledge, re-ignite passion, exchange expertise and provide an overview of the latest research development of our profession.
The theme for this year’s conference continues that of SAOT’s Occupational Therapy Day 2017 – “Enabling Occupations Beyond Borders”. It emphasises the priority for Occupational Therapists (OT) to better integrate care provision through health promotion and preventive care. This echoes the shift of our healthcare system from curative care to preventive care. As OTs, this shift will encourage us to build on our skills and knowledge to support and empower our community to foster health and well-being through occupational engagement and health promotion.
In keeping with the theme, we are honoured to have Dr Catherine Donnelly and Dr Fiona Graham as our esteemed speakers. Participants can hear about the key approaches to use to link our current practice to primary care and the relevance of using coaching to assist our work in preventive and primary care to support occupational performance. Participants can look forward to informative sessions from our invited speakers and two special guests who will share with us their inspiring journey as caregivers in supporting and enabling persons with disabilities in their occupations.
We look forward to abstract submissions for oral and poster presentations in various Occupational Therapy practice areas. The oral presentation competition for the “Best Clinician Research Award”, “Best Clinician Innovation Award” and the “Best Student Presentation Award” will provide an excellent platform for our OT colleagues to present their latest research findings and insights. We continue to seek for workshop proposals through the call for local workshops facilitators to share and impart their skills and knowledge at our pre-conference workshops.
We hope you will avail yourselves of the opportunity to explore, to interact and to learn together as we exchange ideas for the growth of our profession and for ourselves. We look forward to your participation.