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Overall I appreciated how the conversation thoroughly looked at what we do as a profession and how we can discuss that with others. Specifically, I resonated with their points to first define what occupation truly means for our profession then provide specific areas of practice examples. Furthermore, I appreciated that they discussed the importance of starting with small conversations rather than push for greater appearances via billboards and tv appearances.

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I really appreciated the conversation regarding explaining OT as a whole profession. Its often that we may over simplify the concept when explaining it to others. This includes when explaining it to individuals who are not in the medical field as well as those we work with as a clinician. Having other professionals having a thorough understanding of our field leads to a broader understanding to our colleagues and our patients. We tend to not do our career justice because we have such a broad scope but that is all the more reason to really explain how widely we can be utilized.

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One key takeaway for me was how important it is to market OT more often so that others understand our profession. Some ideas mentioned included having a good OT elevator pitch prepared and to really stress the idea of occupation rather than the therapy aspect, to use stories when describing OT to make it more memorable, having visual tools to share what our profession does, increasing our presence in our communities, and using social medias . I also liked how that touched on highlighting what makes OT different to differentiate ourselves from other professions.

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What really stood out to me in the OT Flourish podcast “Promoting Occupational Therapy” was the idea that it’s more important to be understood than to be overly concise. I’ve always felt that one of OT’s biggest challenges is trying to fit such a broad, holistic profession into a quick elevator pitch. The episode reminded me that our goal shouldn’t be to shrink our message, but to make it meaningful and relatable.

One of the most powerful ways to do that is through narrative. Storytelling helps people see occupational therapy in action because it transforms abstract ideas like occupational engagement or person–environment fit into real human experiences. Whether it’s describing how an OT helped a teen rebuild confidence after injury or how an elder found joy in gardening again, those stories stick. They show how OT helps people adapt, participate, and find meaning in everyday life.

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After listening to the podcast, one idea that I found helpful was confidently articulating what OT is and how it differs from other professions, which helps individuals and coworkers truly understand what we do. Using consistent language in daily client care contexts, such as occupation, participation, and meaningful engagement, can help individuals understand our distinct role.

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One key takeaway I had from listening to the podcast is that we, as a profession, need to market ourselves better. People know our profession, but it is not fully understood. The podcast went on to discuss reasons for this, including a lack of assertiveness, not deserving our role well. We need to say what we do and why it matters clearly. We should do this with our clients, our coworkers, and the wider community. I think this was something I noticed in my fieldwork. People would kind of know OT’s role, but they did not see why it is important that I saw them get out of bed, walk to the toilet, and sit and stand from the toilet. I think that explaining what an OT does and why it will benefit them would have helped with the buy-in in and it would help communicate the value of an OT.

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One key takeaway from the podcast that stood out to me is that our profession is known but not truly understood. The podcast highlighted that OTs often struggle to market what we do because we aren’t always able to clearly articulate our role, and we’re often not assertive enough to advocate for our value. It’s okay to have an elevator speech, and it doesn’t have to be perfectly concise. What matters is that we can explain our work in a way that makes sense to us first, so we can then adjust it to help others understand. Another point that stood out to me was the idea that our personality traits may contribute to this challenge. OTs are typically caring, nurturing people who want to make a difference in others’ lives. These qualities make us great clinicians but can make us less assertive when it comes to marketing our profession.

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An important takeaway I had from listening to this podcast is to strengthen our ability to explain our profession to others. This can be addressed by practicing our elevator speech and being conscientious about our language choice. For example, defining what 'occupations' are in the context of occupational therapy can help break down our broad scope of practice without diminishing what we do. Once we establish a strong foundation of the role and responsibility of an occupational therapist, then we can begin using practice examples to drive the point home. This has typically been a challenge for me to explain the importance of what we do because of how amazingly broad our profession is.

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An important takeaway I had from listening to this podcast is to strengthen our ability to explain our profession to others. This can be addressed by practicing our elevator speech and being conscientious about our language choice. For example, defining what 'occupations' are in the context of occupational therapy can help break down our broad scope of practice without diminishing what we do. Once we establish a strong foundation of the role and responsibility of an occupational therapist, then we can begin using practice examples to drive the point home. This has typically been a challenge for me to explain the importance of what we do because of how amazingly broad our profession is.

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My most important takeaway from this podcast was the importance and need of being able to clearly articulate and define the role of OT. This is something that we have been focusing on from day one; we have been encouraged to write an elevator speech many times in order to represent OT well. These have been very helpful speeches to write and consider. However, I have still experienced times where I have difficulty expressing the true value and importance of OT. What the podcasters discussed about us narrowing down the definition of OT too much resonated with me. I plan to think about our profession more broadly in scope and concrete in practice. To me, this means explaining the way we describe occupation as any activity that takes up our time and how utilizing these activities as therapy can improve our daily lives.

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One item from the podcast that I found to be useful was the discussion surrounding how to describe occupational therapy well. More specifically, when the speaker discussed taking a step back and explaining what an occupation is or what it means. He said that most people will understand what we mean by occupation when we say, "It's something that occupies your time." I found it interesting when he said that our barrier to explaining the profession efficiently may be that we are scared that we don't be understood. In reality, we may just be holding ourselves back with this assumption. I also found it useful to think about describing what our profession as a whole is before diving into specific examples. In this sense, then, beginning by explaining what an occupation is and then trusting that the other person will understand what we are saying. Or, in the very least, they will let us know if they are not understanding us. We can then use specific examples to aid in the description if we would like. The speakers pointed out that we often rely on rehearsed elevator pitches to describe the profession, but that does not necessarily mean that we fully understand what we are saying. My biggest takeaway is to start simple, trust that others will understand what I am saying, and try to describe the profession as a whole versus my particular interests within the profession.

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Something that resonated with me while listening to this podcast was the breadth of our profession, and how this may be a factor contributing to the challenge of marketing occupational therapy. The speaker discusses how our elevator pitch includes skills that are greatly different - recommending adaptive equipment and environmental modifications for people with physical disabilities and then assessing handwriting and classroom skills for children with Autism. In my experience, I find I get the same confused response from people I speak to people about occupational therapy and give examples like this, which was also shared in the podcast. It sparked a curiosity about the potential to split up the profession after a generalized practitioner education we receive in school. To my understanding, SLP has their Masters program and then complete a residency-style training in their area of interest. The feasibility of this programming for occupational therapy would be interesting to investigate. This way, what we "do" is more specific to each provider's area.

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I found this podcast to be very interesting, when discussing why OT is not a well-known profession. I like the part where one of the podcasters was discussing the importance of using occupation-based language throughout our practice, with no additional explanation to what each term means. That way, it can become instilled in other professionals minds and they will hopefully start to use the language as well throughout their practice, even if it is a different concentration. Creating cohesive and well-understood language is critical in the medical field and can ensure everyone is on the same page and has a mutual understanding of all the professions they will or currently work with.

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One thing that stood out to me on the podcast was approximately 25 minutes in towards the idea of not "marketing" to our clients about the need for OT and pitching it to a client as a buy, but instead, marketing the clarification of what OT is and how it can help. He spoke on how the clients are there, there is always going to be clientele who need our services and can benefit from OT, so the need to put up "billboards" and everything on "come to OT!!" really is not necessary. Instead, we should be promoting OT for how it can help and educating on our services so the clients know where to look when they do inevitably, potentially, need OT.

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Something that stood out to me was the recurring idea that OTs may not fully understand their practice and scope well enough to confidently explain it to others. With the variety of practice areas and populations OTs work with, it can feel like a lot to broadly explain the profession which can lead to individuals relying on their practice setting examples only in an effort to make it simple. This paired with the idea that the explanation of OT needs to be a short and simple example makes it challenging for folks inside and outside the profession to truly grasp all the things OTs can do in a variety of settings. The guest speaker suggests that by defining occupation in the context of OT can help others understand the variety of things OTs can do instead of relying on setting specific examples.

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One idea that stuck with me after listening to the podcast was a sort of combination of multiple points made by the guest speaker. He cautions against making our explanations of OT brief because this oversimplifies the profession and puts OT in a box, especially when we describe OT by providing practice examples. He explains that one reason for this is that OTs are often not assertive enough. We often are hesitant to explain OT in all its breadth because we anticipate people won't understand it. We do ourselves a disservice if we are constantly compromising our own value in attempt to be understand. The breadth and variety of OT is a huge component of what makes our profession so vital as we add value to all sorts of settings and populations. There are other ways to explain what OT is without oversimplifying it for the sake of comprehension.

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One thing that stood out to me from this podcast was when the guest speaker stated that many OT's by nature are not very assertive people, and this carries over into our professional lives. We can be timid in voicing our importance during conversations with others, and while we have our elevator pitch to generally describe the essence of what OT is and what we do, it doesn't truly describe the importance of our profession. We are allowed to have a longer elevator pitch and description of what it is that we do so we can help others to understand why we are an important piece of healthcare.

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I really enjoyed listening to this podcast and believe there were a number of key takeaways that are useful. I found the opening discussion regarding the challenges of defining our profession to be very thought-provoking. Specifically, one quote that stood out to me was that the "profession is known, just not understood." The podcasters then went on to discuss how OTs tend to rely heavily on providing practice examples to explain the profession rather than focusing on the overarching, core values of the profession as a whole. This is something that I have definitely been guilty of, as sometimes it seems easier to explain the role of OT within the context of a specific setting/population that OTs work in/with; however, I can completely understand how this can then lead to confusion when someone may encounter an OT within a different practice area, as their goals and focus of therapy will likely look very different. I appreciated their emphasis on learning how to better explain the actual profession as a whole and using occupation-based language when talking to others rather than simply providing practice-based examples that may not be transferrable across practice areas and settings.

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One takeaway that stood out to me, which somewhat contradicts what we have learned, is the concept of an elevator pitch not needing to be concise. I get the value of having a short, punchy description of what OT is, but as the speaker alluded to, it can sometimes minimize what we do because of the time constraint that we have placed on ourselves. I think that the insight of being okay with keeping an OT elevator pitch broad, since our profession encompasses so many different things, is something important to consider going forward. It comes down to the quality of the pitch (being understood) over quantity (a short, catch-all pitch).

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I enjoyed listening to this podcast. There were several tidbits. I appreciated from the Discussion had by these two occupational therapists, however, what stood out to me most was the male commentators take on the use of the word “function” to describe what occupational therapist do. I was surprised he was so adamant against the use of this word in relation To what occupational therapists Do at the core of their profession, because I feel like that rhetoric has resonated with me when I have tried to write my elevator pitch and explain this profession to other people. It also seems like describing what we do in terms of helping people function in their daily life, resonates with people more than when I use the word occupation. However, I appreciate the encouragement to continue to redefine what “occupation” looks like, and encourage people to think of it as something that does not just relate to their job. I will reflect on the need for us to define what occupation is and how it relates to what we do with the core of our practice.

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I liked how they noted how "occupation" means how you fill time, or occupy your time. I don't know why, but this definition has never fully clicked in my head. I always resort to a longer definition of what occupation means, when it could be much more simple and people may understand more. It makes it easy to come up with a quick and easy definition that can be transferrable to many contexts. Even when describing occupational therapy to other disciplines, this foundational idea can help distinguish how we are different and what our scope is because as the podcast noted, sometimes OTs can act as a "clean up crew" and pick up responsibilities that may have fallen through the cracks. I feel that I, and the profession, can be more assertive with this definition of occupation more present in our minds.

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Something I appreciated about this speaker's advice was that our "elevator pitches" are allowed to be messy at first as long as we gain practice with describing our profession confidently to others. I feel like I have felt pressured to be able to fully capture our profession in 30 seconds, which makes me feel panicked to try and describe it "right", so it is a good reminder that it doesn't have to have a time limit. I also think his advice to keep our elevator pitches broad was helpful. I have always thought that since our profession is so broad, it is harder to describe because I have to give several examples of where/how we practice to fully capture what we do. He gave a good reminder that the breadth of our profession is what makes it so interesting and impactful, and that if we just give a good explanation of what occupation is and our general approaches to therapy, our conversation partner can then help guide us towards what other information they seek about it (ie: how does this apply to kids? What does that look like in a hospital setting? etc)