Conclave: The professional blind spot

We’re officially one week away from the 2009 Student Conclave! In an earlier post, I wrote about how participating with AOTA advocacy is like having car insurance for your future career, and urged you to attend the Conclave Capitol Hill Day on Friday morning (which, 150 students are interested in attending, and that’s very exciting!).

Sometimes—especially if you drive every day—the process of driving a car gets to be pretty banal and we may find ourselves just going through the motions. Obviously, this is very dangerous, but I’ve found that the more often I drive, the more careless (or maybe fearless?) I get.

One thing that I’m always worried about is forgetting to check my blind spot before switching lanes. It’s strange to me that still, after making automobiles for 100 years, we haven’t completely eliminated the blind spot, meaning that just checking your rear view and side mirror is simply not enough to be sure you’re in the clear.

Blind spots are tricky because you do have to take your eyes off the road in front of you to check the spot, which means you are momentarily flailing your 4,000 pounds of metal down the highway without even watching.

I think in many ways, professional advocacy is akin to checking your blind spots. While you definitely can drive for miles and miles without ever looking, and you can tempt fate, perhaps get lucky, and actually be in the clear every time you switch lanes, but one day it’s almost inevitable that the luck will run out.

I’m sure a lot of occupational therapy practitioners go through their day at work, complete their CE, and go home, without ever paying attention to the blind spots like federal legislation, reimbursement problems, or other professions infringing on your scope of practice, but that too is tempting fate.

So you definitely will want to attend the Stand Up, Speak Up: Advocate for Occupational Therapy session on Saturday, November 21. In this session, you will learn about how to advocate for your clients, your profession, and yourself!

You still have a week to plan out your road trip to Baltimore for next week’s Conclave (if you haven’t already done so), and don’t worry, you can still register on-site in Baltimore!