Occupational Therapy

If English is not your first language and you are not a national of a country deemed by either the UK Home Office or St George’s, University of London to be ‘majority English speaking’ listed here, you will be required to meet the English Language requirements outlined below. Tests are valid for a period of two years.

Work experience

You must have work or voluntary experience in a field which demonstrates communication and people skills which are relevant to a career in Occupational Therapy. This may be in the field of Education, Social Care, or Health but also in Customer Services or Conflict Resolution. Your personal statement should reflect your awareness of the relevance of your experiences to Occupational Therapy. In addition, you must be able to demonstrate a broad awareness of the scope of Occupational Therapy. Although work experience is ideal, your work experience does not have to take place in an NHS or social care setting. It can be paid or voluntary. Working in a care home, hospice or doing community work with disabled adults or children are examples of good work experience. It is useful to see evidence that you have experience with people using health or social care services.

If invited to interview you may be required to provide formal letters detailing the dates, hours worked and duties carried out.

We do not specify a minimum amount of experience, but the more you have the better - there's no such thing as too much experience. It does not have to be full time but regular experience over a period of months is preferable to a couple of weeks here and there as it demonstrates commitment. Recent work experience is preferable although you can reflect on any relevant past experience.

Applicants who are studying or who have previously studied on another Pre-Registration Occupational Therapy course in the UK may not be considered. However, it is worth contacting the admissions tutor to check.

The following qualifications may enhance your application, but cannot contribute to the minimum requirements:

• NVQs

• ITEC Anatomy and Physiology.

If you are applying on the basis of A Levels, you must meet both the A Level and GCSE requirements below.

GCSEs

If you are applying on the basis of International Baccalaureate, you need to meet both our Higher Level and Standard Level requirements, as outlined below.

If you are applying on the basis of an Access Diploma, you must meet both the Access Diploma and GCSE requirements below.

GCSEs

We welcome applications from applicants around the world. For information on the requirements for your country, please visit our International Qualifications page.

If you are applying from outside of the UK, you will need to meet the English language requirements outlined here. This is a group 1 course.

In addition to meeting the academic criteria for admission, you should be able to demonstrate a keen interest in and commitment to working with people, be able to identify relevant transferable skills that would make you a good Occupational Therapist, demonstrate a broad awareness of the scope of Occupational Therapy, and have obtained some relevant work experience where possible. All of this should be evident from your UCAS personal statement. Applicants who do not demonstrate this are unlikely to be invited for interview.

We understand the challenges for our prospective applicants for medicine and allied health courses trying to gain work experience at this time, particularly in clinical settings.    

In response to the government’s social distancing guidelines, which have a significant impact on all areas of life, we have chosen to relax our work experience requirements for prospective applicants for our courses which would normally require these.    

Despite the relaxed requirements, we still require our applicants to have an understanding of the realities of working as a healthcare professional and to show they have the necessary skills and attributes for their chosen career. Online resources can give you valuable insight into working in the healthcare sector and outline the wide range of careers and courses available. You can find a number of suggested resources for each of our courses here.

Should you receive an offer to study at St George’s, you will be required to complete a health check and be declared fit to study and practise by the Occupational Health (OH) department before you begin your studies.

The following vaccinations are mandatory for all healthcare students before you begin your studies:

• MMR (measles, mumps and rubella)
• Meningococcal meningitis
• Diphtheria
• Pertussis (whooping cough)
• Poliomyelitis
• Tetanus

As part of the process, you will also be screened by the OH team for Chickenpox, Tuberculosis, HIV and Hepatitis B and C.

When admitting candidates to study and practise as a health practitioner, we have an obligation to both patients and to the individual student. Candidates who are concerned about a health issue are advised to contact us.

This course will include work with children and vulnerable adults, so you will be required to submit a series of declarations.

If you are invited to an interview, we will request some additional information from you, regarding your criminal record, educational history and employment history. You will also have the opportunity to make any other declarations that you’d like us to be aware of. We may not able to consider applicants who were suspended from previous study/work due to fitness to practise issues or failure in assessments/examinations.

If you are made an offer, you will be required to complete an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. More information about this is sent to applicants as part of the admissions process.

• Essentials for Allied Health Professionals

• Factors Influencing Professional Practice

• Foundations of Occupational Therapy

• Occupation for Health and Wellbeing

• Practice Placement 1

• Research in Practice

• Promoting Occupation in Contemporary Practice

• Reflection, Evaluation and Outcome Measurement for Occupational Therapists

• Inter-professional Debates/Management

• Practice Placement 4

You will be taught by staff with extensive experience of working in practice, teaching and research, who will share their up-to-date knowledge and experience in specialist areas including mental health, neurology, trauma, orthopaedics, children and families. Where possible we invite service users or patients to talk to you directly about their own experiences, for example, their lived experience of occupational therapy and the importance of participating in their occupations. Capitalising on our contacts with different health trusts, as well as St George’s Occupational Therapy department, we encourage practitioners to deliver teaching sessions on specialist areas of practice, such as falls prevention and oncology.

St George’s enjoys a global reputation as experts in population health, infection and immunity, and molecular and clinical sciences thanks to our four world-class research institutes – Molecular and Clinical Science, Population Health Research, Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education and Infection and Immunity.

We use a range of assessment techniques, chosen to match the competencies being learned and tested within each module. These include written assignments (essays, posters, presentations, reflective writing, case reports) and practical assessments of occupational therapy skills on placement. Assessed, practice placement blocks take place in all years of study. In your final year, we ask you to produce a problem-based report on an aspect of interdisciplinary practice, a research project and a poster related to contemporary occupational therapy practice.

• Acute health and social care

• Charities

• Children’s therapy services or schools

• Forensic mental health

• Hospices

• Hospitals

• Housing departments

• International services

• Mental health services

• Older people’s services

• Private practice

• Rehabilitation centres

Things to remember

You must provide:

• full details of your Level 2 (GCSE equivalent qualifications) with grades

• full details of your Level 3 (A Level or equivalent qualifications) with achieved/predicted grades

• a personal statement (more information about this document is available on the UCAS website)

• an academic reference from your current or most recent institutions with predicted grades

• log in to UCAS Track and check your application to see if all your academic details have been included.

If any subjects or predicted results are missing, email the Admissions Officer with your UCAS number and missing subjects and grades.

After submitting your application to UCAS

• Log in to UCAS Track and check your application to see if all your academic details have been included.

• If any subjects or predicted results are missing, email the admissions officer with your UCAS number and missing subjects and grades

We will consider applications from applicants who wish to defer entry by a year, provided you plan to use the time constructively. If you are offered a place on the course and subsequently decide to defer, you must inform us by 1 June of the year of application.

Acknowledgement emails and letters are sent out on receipt of applications. Please ensure that your email account is able to accept communications from St George’s as we will mainly communicate with applicants via email. Selected applicants will be invited to attend an interview.

Decisions from St George’s will be entered onto UCAS Track. Applicants will be contacted via email.

All face-to-face teaching will take place at St George’s, University of London on the campus that we share with St George’s Hospital in Tooting with appropriate social distancing measures in place.

We have not explored alternative locations for teaching and have no immediate plans to do so.

If government advice on social distancing changes, we will consider ways in which we can deliver more teaching onsite in a manner that is safe for students and staff.

Starting in September 2021 we hope to have a minimum of two days onsite for workshops and some tutorials and practical sessions. Lectures will continue online for the autumn term.

For clinical programmes, placement providers will continue to offer placements as they have in previous years. We will use our existing procedures for allocating students to placements.

We also use placements outside of the NHS and social care, and these will be subject to the same quality and safety arrangements for students.

Prior to each placement, students undertake a week of preparation, which will include any necessary Covid-19, PPE and risk assessment arrangements.

We are not making any significant changes to the content of the Occupational Therapy BSc programme.

However, we have remodelled placement activity for Years 2 and 3 to accommodate the original schedule for practice placements due to the interruptions caused by the pandemic.

This has been necessary as all students on this programme must complete 1,000 hours of practice placement as part of the degree award and professional body requirements.

All the programme modules are compulsory and must be passed for successful completion for the degree award, and for you to be eligible for registration with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) under the protected title of Occupational Therapist.

There is a possibility that government advice on social distancing may change in the future and this may alter access to the campus. We expect to be able to continue to deliver all modules of the programme in a blended format (a combination of online learning and on site sessions, per the guidance given for autumn term 2021) . We will continue to adapt practice placement activities, in line with the guidance of the relevant professional bodies (Health Education England, Health and Care Professions Council and the Royal College of Occupational Therapists).

Course content

Incoming Year 2 students will complete their second and third placements in 2021/22.

Incoming Year 3 year students will complete placements 3 and 4 in 2021/22.

The Occupational Therapy BSc programme intends to ensure a minimum of 2 days per week spent on site at the university, where possible.

The existing learning outcomes for our modules and courses will remain in place.

From September to December 2021 all students will primarily access their learning, including learning materials, via the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), Canvas.

Hands-on practical teaching and learning activities will be delivered on campus with appropriate social distancing and personal protective equipment (PPE) measures put in place, and with controls on the number of people in each location, as per current government guidance.

The online components of the course will be designed to balance interactive real-time sessions with lecturers and other students, with self-paced independent study. Students will have clear learning pathways through the activities they are expected to engage with, and there will be opportunities to check learning and progress.

Personal tutor support and all other student support, such as the Academic Success Centre, will also be online for this period, using a range of methods for staying in touch, such as telephone, email and the University’s web conferencing systems and Microsoft Teams.

All students on placement will be expected to undertake a risk assessment and adhere to local Trust working patterns and guidance. 

To get the most from online study, hardware requirements have been established and communicated to all existing students and offer holders. Students will need their own personal computer or laptop and an internet connection in their place of accommodation. This needs to be in place at the start of the course. Once enrolled, students will have the ability to use Office 365 as part of our institutional licence, and access software required for their modules/courses via AppsAnywhere. In addition, we offer Office for Mac via Office 365, but only the following applications are available for Mac: Teams, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, OneNote. Web-based Office applications are available on Mac. Full details are available here.

There is a provision for students who may struggle to meet the hardware requirements to contact our IT Hardship team.

At this stage, we expect to deliver the course within the planned timescales to enable successful students to progress through the programme, and to graduate without delay, providing they meet the requirements of the programme.

Some assessments are designed to be taken on-site or in small groups. Where necessary we have developed alternative assessment strategies to enable students to complete assessments remotely and without coming to campus. Students will be coached on how to use the relevant online platforms to enable them to do this.

The programme does include practical, clinical and skill-based elements that are delivered in specialist teaching rooms and with specialist equipment. Practical classes in our specialist teaching rooms will be arranged to minimise travel to and from the site (approximately twice a week during September–December 2021) with appropriate social distancing measures and PPE if required by government guidelines. Anatomy sessions normally delivered in our Dissection Room will be delivered online with video recordings in the first term (September–December 2021). Practical, clinical and skills-based teaching will run as planned for the remainder of the 2021/22 academic year.

We have currently planned for placement activity for Years 1, 2 and 3 of the programme and will use our normal systems and processes to allocate students to placements. We will consider any necessary risk assessments for individual students and plan their placements accordingly.

There is a possibility that government advice on social distancing may change. If that is the case, we will endeavour to adjust practical components of the programme in order to maximise a positive student experience.

We will continue to offer final-year research projects in small groups which enable students to work with staff on topics related to occupational science or occupational therapy. Depending on government advice and guidance, we may be able to offer face-to-face data collection. However, projects will be designed to be flexible, in case this is not possible.

For clinical programmes, placement providers will continue to offer placements as they have in previous years. Their capacity to offer placements may change if there is a further outbreak of Covid-19 and delivering care and treatment to affected patients becomes the overriding priority. If this happens, we will limit the impact on students where possible. We will place students in those placement sites that do continue to accept students, and if necessary, we will use our simulation facilities or remote placements to offer a comparable clinical experience.

For continuing students, it may be possible to delay placements to the following academic year to protect student interests. However, there is a possibility that graduation for some final year students may be delayed until they are able to complete all placements.

Incoming students (starting September 2021)

We assess the knowledge, skills and attributes of our students in a variety of ways. The methods that we use include formal written examinations, practical examinations and in-course assessments. These might include essays, practical write-ups and special study reports, oral presentations and poster presentations.

All formal written examinations take place in December 2021. At this stage, we expect to deliver these assessments as planned. Although some assessments are designed to be taken on-site, we successfully developed an alternative assessment strategy in 2019/20 and in 2020/21 in order to enable students to complete assessments remotely without coming  to campus. For example, formal examinations and some presentations were taken remotely by students within a window stipulated by us. If the government advice on social distancing does not change by December 2021, we will take this approach again.

Current students

The university-based assessments will continue, and students will submit online as usual. Some assessments have been adapted slightly (e.g. the small group presentation assessments) to ensure each student can achieve the learning outcomes. You will be informed of these changes at the start of each module.

Assessments, where students are directly observed performing a practical or clinical skill by an examiner, can only be delivered on campus or on practice placement. For assessments within which a student’s ability to communicate appropriately with a patient or simulated patient can also only be delivered onsite, we expect at this stage to be able to deliver assessments of this kind onsite or during practice placement.

However, if government advice changes and the campus is closed, we would not be able to deliver these assessments as planned. In that case, it might be possible to delay these assessments to the following academic year to protect student safety. If that happens, graduation for some final-year students may be delayed until you are able to complete all assessments, because we have an obligation to our regulators to confirm that our students have met the clinical and practical outcomes for the programme before they graduate.

We do not expect students to incur any extra costs over and above those that we have advertised on the course page.

As a result of our courses beginning with the majority of teaching online in autumn term 2021, you will need a personal laptop or computer and access to the internet to participate in online lectures. Information is available on recommended device specification here.

If you are worried you might struggle to meet these requirements, you should email IThardship@sgul.ac.uk so we can look at support options for you.

Personal protective equipment (PPE) will be provided for you if needed.

If government guidance changes and we need to postpone or alter placements, then you may need to cover living expenses might be beyond the standard term dates of the programme.

A typical timetable will vary each year of the course.

Students will complete anywhere from 1 to 2 placements per year depending on the year of the course they are currently completing.

Depending on the government guidance surrounding Covid-19, the hope is that most teaching will return to site in January 2022 following the end of social distance guidelines.

Year 1

Students will typically have sessions (both remote and onsite) Monday to Friday from 9:00-17:00 with breaks interspersed throughout the day.

Students will typically be on site most Thursdays and Fridays, and possibly some Mondays in the first term.

Students will complete a four-week placement after Easter.

Year 2

Students will typically have sessions (online and onsite) Monday to Friday from 9:00-17:00 with breaks interspersed throughout the day.

Students will typically be on site on Mondays and Tuesdays in the first term.

Students will complete an eight-week placement in the autumn term and another eight-week placement after Easter.

Year 3

Students will typically have sessions (online and onsite) Monday to Friday from 9:00-17:00 with breaks interspersed throughout the day.

The days students are on site will vary in the first term.  

Students will complete two eight-week placements in January 2022 and in April 2022 in order to be able to graduate by July 2022.

Academic terms dates can be found on this page.

At enrolment or re-enrolment you consented to the changes we anticipated as a result of the pandemic, which were outlined on the ‘Covid-19 updates’ tab of your course page at: www.sgul.ac.uk/study/courses.

The changes that we are making are the consequence of current public health advice and our need to anticipate changes to that advice. Our capacity to offer alternatives is therefore limited. We do not feel that the changes will adversely affect students.  

If you wish to avoid these changes (e.g. by taking a year out from your studies) please discuss this directly with your course team in the first instance.

We remain, as always, focused on the best experience and outcomes for our students.

If you have concerns about the quality of course delivery, please raise these with your course team in the first instance.

If you wish to take a more formal route, guidance is available to you in our student concerns and complaints procedure.