Fieldwork education is an important professional responsibility of each professional. There is an informative website offered by AOTA for fieldwork educators. The college and university academic fieldwork coordinators will be more than happy to assist you in preparing for hosting fieldwork students. Contact your area occupational therapy programs. You can also attend the AOTA Fieldwork Educators Certificate Program (FWECP) which will prepare you for being a field work educator. Click here for more information.
ACOTE standard C1.11 states that a minimum of one year full-time (or equivalent) of practice experience subsequent to initial certification and is adequately prepared to serve as a fieldwork educator. You can learn more about the standards on the ACOTE website.
Generally, students carry student liability insurance through the college or university where they attend. $1,000,000/$3,000,000 is required by most schools. Check with the individual schools with which you have clinical contracts to validate.
For a Level II Fieldwork experience, a certified occupational therapy assistant can supervise an occupational therapy assistant student under the supervision of a registered occupational therapist. The occupational therapy assistant student can also be supervised by a registered occupational therapist.
A certified occupational therapy assistant can supervise an occupational therapy student during Level I Fieldwork. An occupational therapist (OTR) must supervise an occupational therapy student during Level II Fieldwork.
ACOTE requires a minimum of the equivalent of 24 weeks full-time Level II fieldwork. This may be completed on a full-time basis, but may not be less than half-time as defined by the fieldwork site.
Hourly requirements have been replaced by number of week requirements. ACOTE standard C 1.10. requires a minimum of 16 weeks’ full-time Level II fieldwork (in more than one practice area). This may be completed on a part-time basis, as long as it is at least 50% of an FTE at that site.
Professional Development Units (PDU’s) are earned by occupational therapy fieldwork educators based upon the number of weeks they provide full time supervision. For example, a FW educator may earn one PDU for each week of supervision for an occupational therapy student. The NBCOT website has more information about PDU opportunities.
Information on the new AOTA FWPE can be found here. This new format replaces the previous version as of January 2021.
The NEOTEC conferences are held annually (usually in June) and are open to fieldwork educators by invitation from NEOTEC member schools.
If you have a student at your facility that is not passing the specific tasks listed on the Fieldwork Performance Evaluation and is not fulfilling the requirements of the specific goals set up by your fieldwork site, contact the academic fieldwork coordinator from the specific college or university in which the student is enrolled.
You should contact the designated academic fieldwork coordinator for each specific school. You can find a list on our members page