Around 150 delegates from around the world were at Bournemouth University for the Occupational Science Europe Conference.
The two-day Health and Wellbeing through Occupation conference offered opportunities to discuss ideas and learn about developments in occupational science, health and wellbeing.
Delegates – who came from as far afield as the Caribbean, the USA and Canada – also had the chance to take part in interactive sessions, including chocolate-making, wool craft and finding out how dancing can benefit people with Parkinson’s.
Principal Lecturer in Occupational Therapy at BU, Dr Bethan Collins, organised the conference.
She said: “This is genuinely international and interdisciplinary, which is brilliant for Occupational Science. We have got nurses, care workers - a huge range of people with different backgrounds.
“Occupational Science is the study of what people are doing in everyday life and why people do things, so we didn’t just want people sat listening, we wanted activity-based scenarios.
“We are looking at how we can promote wellbeing through getting people stuck into something and losing track of time.”
The conference was also a celebration of ten years of Occupational Therapy education at BU.
Bethan said: “We want to show off Bournemouth and BU and the great facilities we have here and the CPD opportunities on offer.
“We hope it will be a wonderful opportunity for people to network, engage and move the debate on.
“We’ve already had calls for health professionals to take occupational science seriously and to think about how we can enable people to do things that are meaningful to them to promote health and wellbeing and how that needs to be a really important part of healthcare.”
Find out more about the Occupational Science Europe conference
