Meeting the educational needs of fieldwork supervisors : a collaborative workshop developed by New South Wales occupational therapy fieldwork coordinators.

This paper describes the collaborative preparation and implementation of a workshop for occupational therapy fieldwork supervisors which has been developed by the four occupational therapy programmes in New South Wales. The workshop was primarily designed to meet the education needs of new and inexperienced fieldwork supervisors who could subsequently be prepared to supervise students from any of the four occupational therapy programmes in the state. The workshop was also offered to more experienced fieldwork supervisors who were interested in adapting their fieldwork programmes to incorporate the needs of students from the four occupational therapy programmes. The process of constructing the workshop is outlined. Results from pre-workshop questionnaires (n = 237) and post-workshop evaluations (n = 257), during the first year of presentation of the workshop, suggested that the workshop was effective in meeting the objectives of preparing fieldwork supervisors to supervise students from a variety of educational programmes. In addition, the collaboration between the occupational therapy programmes during the workshops has enabled other state-wide fieldwork issues to be identified, and further projects have been undertaken to address fieldwork concerns.