NEWLY graduated occupational therapists (OT) are struggling to find jobs throughout the Western Trust area.
Similar to the graduate nurses who have previously contacted this paper after finding no vacancies in the local health service this Fermanagh OT graduate has said they have been told there is little possibility they will be finding a role this year.
Outlining the lengthy and rigorous northern-wide recruitment process all graduates must endure, the graduate explained they could be waiting for a year or more to find out if they have been successful.
“For those like me, I completed my interview in June. I must sit in limbo until June 2025 to see if a job will become available for me to be offered,” they said.
“That will mean myself and many others could possibly be waiting up to 12 months for a job to become available. I decided to speak to agencies in the north and they have told me, and I quote, ‘Unfortunately there are no locum posts available, they are struggling to recruit locums within the service at the moment due to funding issues, we are seeing this pretty much all across the Western Trust’.
“This means I will have to go through the interview process again in June 2025, and if the situation is still the same next year as it is now, that means I, and many others, could be waiting up to 24 months or more for a job to come up.
“That is 24 months where many of us will have had no experience since leaving university. This makes it more difficult for interviews when you haven’t been able to get experience, and you’re completing your interview in the same room with others who already have been working for years.”
The graduate called for change, noting the current system was harmful to the NHS in the long term.
“We understand that change will not happen overnight but I believe we need to do something to ‘start the ball rolling’ so to speak. This applies not only for OT’s but many of our allied health professions too,” they said.
“It makes me feel as though there’s a very slim chance of actually getting a Band 5 job as the more time passes, the longer it has been from my university placement experience. This subsequently makes it harder to complete interviews and to compete and stand out against those who have had much more experience.
“Although I absolutely love occupational therapy, the current state of the Western Trust’s employment rates for OT’s has made me entirely question my choice of career.”
The graduate, who studied in England, said they “probably would have stayed” if they had realised the situation here.
In response to their concerns, a Western Trust spokesperson said, “All HSC Trusts have an agreed and standardised approach for the regional recruitment of Band 5 Allied Health Professional (AHP) staff.
“This regional approach means that interviews for Band 5 Occupational Therapists are held once per year, with a waiting list created. If a waiting list is nearing exhaustion for some Trust areas, a top up interview process is arranged.
“In relation to job availability, Band 5 jobs can only be recruited into when they become vacant and are replaced from the regional waiting list.
“Some Trusts have larger staff groups and therefore have more opportunities and turnover and if applicants have a particular speciality that they want to work in, then they may need to be flexible with location. In recent years, the majority of Band 5 applicants on the waiting list have been offered a post within one of their preferred areas.”
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