Giorgia Armellini
G. Armellini - An in-company internship at The Swatch Group SA
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Giorgia Armellini is currently attending the third year of the Bachelor's degree course in Occupational Therapy. During her training, she did an internship at The Swatch Group in Genestrerio, the first collaboration between the Bachelor's degree course in Ergotherapy and a company.
What reasons prompted you to undertake Bachelor training in Occupational Therapy?
After completing my training in osteopathy, my interest was directed towards Occupational Therapy with the intention of completing and enriching my skills in the rehabilitation field by offering people with difficulties even more opportunities to implement personal strategies aimed at improving their quality of life in everyday life.
What aspects do you most appreciate about the degree course?
What has always impressed me most is the ability to engage and the closeness of a faculty that is attentive, participative and able to guide and support all of us students. The training I am undergoing enriches me every day, making me feel more confident in the skills I have acquired.
You are currently doing an internship at the Swatch Group in Genestrerio in collaboration with SUVA; as an occupational therapist in training, what are the tasks and objectives of this period of practice?
The starting objective was to create an interview to be submitted to a sample of female workers to analyse their perception of satisfaction and effectiveness of the stretching programme that SUVA implemented, in agreement with Swatch, during work breaks. At the end of the administration, I collected the data and interpreted the results using occupational therapy approaches and interventions to improve the programme. Subsequently, as a further objective, I analysed all workstations noting any problems and, based on ergonomic principles and with an ergotherapeutic outlook, proposed alternative solutions that were positively received by the company.
I then carried out a follow up check at the end of the internship to verify that the new strategies implemented were really functional for the person and the work task performed.
I constantly reported the results to the company and SUVA, who welcomed the project I had developed, allowing me to see the real implementation of the indications offered by the end of the internship.
For the first time, one of the internships envisaged within the Bachelor in Occupational Therapy is being carried out in a company; how do you rate this experience?
The experience was very positive because it allowed me to get to know areas other than the hospital context, evaluating how ergotherapeutic intervention can be functional for the worker, who can therefore carry out his or her work activities, using different strategies, in a more harmonious and easier way.
All this was made possible by working in an interdisciplinary team that shared objectives and proposals.
What advice would you give to future students interested in undertaking SUPSI training in Occupational Therapy?
In order for this degree course to become a resource for students, it is necessary to have the desire to experiment, to learn, to collaborate with teams from different fields, to be open to comparison and commitment in study but above all in practice.
It is important to be able to welcome diversity, be empathetic, listen, know one's own resources but also understand one's limits and know how to ask for support at the most critical moments.