There is no sugar-coating it: being an OT right now can be really tough, and many clinicians are simply not happy in their current roles. When overwhelm or burnout hits, it’s understandable to think the only solution is to immediately leave and find a new job.

But if you don't stop and take the time to reflect on exactly what parts of your job are causing that stress in the first place, there is a high chance you will just jump from one job that doesn't fit, straight into another that doesn't work either.

Before you hand in your resignation, it is crucial to reflect on the root causes of your frustrations. Sometimes these are things you can fix yourself, or things you can gain clarity on through talking them through with your management team. Other times, this pause and reflection will simply reinforce that it actually is time to move on.

If you are finding work hard right now, here are five key areas to reflect on before you change jobs, and what you can do about them.

1. The Role Setup, Environment, and Routine

Before blaming the job itself, ask yourself what type of routine and environment you actually need to do your best work. Are you someone who needs structure, predictability, and routine? Do you like to plan your days meticulously, or do you thrive on variety? Consider whether you actually like having lots of face-to-face client contact doing therapy, or if you are happier sitting behind a computer writing reports or case managing.

Here’s an example of where this fit can go wrong. Often, new grads take hospital roles because they are told that is where the best jobs and support are. However, they accept these roles without reflecting on whether the fast-paced, noisy, unpredictable hospital environment actually suits their needs. Acute settings can lead to sensory overload, and it is notoriously difficult to implement accommodations in this setting that could easily work in other workplaces.

What you can do: Reflect on the overall setup of your role and caseload. If you are struggling, see if changes like structuring your workday differently, or working from home more or less, could help. If the problem is a noisy shared office, see if assistive devices like noise-cancelling headphones make a difference.

2. The Client Journey

For many OTs, job satisfaction and professional identity are deeply tied to developing long-term therapeutic relationships, working on goals over time, and actually seeing a client's progress. However, roles in acute hospitals or community-based roles focused on one-off assessments, only allow time for gathering essential information, making on-the-spot decisions, and facilitating quick discharges.

If you are someone who craves long-term follow-up, but you are stuck in an acute role, you run the risk of constantly pushing to extend your involvement beyond your actual scope. On paper, this will look like poor productivity or inefficiency, but in reality, you are just trying to do too much within the constraints of the role.

What you can do: Identify what type of client journey brings you joy. If you need long-term relationships to feel fulfilled, look for roles in slow-stream rehab, residential aged care facilities, or community-roles with a focus on capacity building, and step away from assessment-only or acute discharge roles.

3. Superficial Knowledge and Imposter Syndrome

When you are constantly busy and under the pump, the focus shifts to just getting quick wins. As a result, your supervision sessions can centre on getting fast answers to immediate questions, rather than building the reflective practice skills needed to find your own answers.

This quickly leads to imposter syndrome. You might know what to do for a particular condition at a superficial level, but you don't truly understand the why behind your decisions. When a client presents a little bit differently, you will struggle because the underlying clinical reasoning just isn't there.

What you can do: Shift your focus back to the foundations. Seek out CPD and teaching that doesn’t forget to include the basics of OT processes, theory and step-by-step clinical reasoning. This is exactly the approach I take in my membership presentations and courses.

4. The Supervisor Relationship

Sometimes the core issue is the relationship with your immediate supervisor. It might be that you don't actually have an immediate supervisor available, or there is a fundamental clash in personality or teaching and learning styles. When you don't feel your supervision is meeting your needs, the job becomes infinitely harder.

What you can do: It’s not normal to have no supervision built into your role – even experienced OTs should have formal sessions each month. Request this from your employer, or if it was never part of the contract you signed (sometimes you may have thought it would be OK to get by without) then it’s time to invest in external supervision or mentoring. The bonus is you get to choose your supervisor, but the catch is that you will need to come prepared to your sessions; an external supervisor has no idea what you’re struggling with unless you can reflect and tell them.

5. Managing your own health and life outside of work

Sometimes being an OT is hard for all the workplace reasons above, but sometimes just doing life is hard for other reasons. Many OTs have their own health conditions or diagnoses that they are trying to manage. OTs go into the profession because they want to help others, but in our efforts to focus on building clinical skills, we can easily lose focus on our own self-care. We forget to make work easier for ourselves and struggle to know when it is OK to step back and prioritise other aspects of our lives.

What you can do: Consider if the workplace isn't actually the problem, and whether you need to see someone to manage your own health and needs in all aspects of your life. Think about whether an EAP (Employee Assistance Program) appointment could be helpful if it's available in your workplace, or seek your own external support through a counsellor, psychologist, or even your own OT. You might find that the role itself is actually OK once you have the right strategies and extra supports in place.

Before you make your final decision...

If your reflection prompts you to realise that this definitely isn't the right role, then you can confidently start looking elsewhere. But before you make the decision to leave, don't make assumptions about what your company may or may not be able to offer. Unless there are clear signs that they would not provide accommodations or change their ways to support you, it is always worth letting them know.

Sometimes what you think is obvious isn't actually obvious, and your supervisors and managers won't know that you're struggling unless you speak up. Be brave and tell them what you need, but don’t just say you're struggling. If you can give them some clear direction about how they can help you, there is a much higher chance they will be able to implement strategies that will actually help. And if you put that forward and they can't make the necessary changes, at least they won't be taken by surprise when you do decide to leave, and you will leave knowing you put in your best effort to make it work.

If you found this newsletter helpful, make sure you subscribe and ring the bell on my profile so you’ll be notified whenever I put up a new post. Also check out the Your OT Tutor website and subscribe to the mailing list or sign-up for the Learning Library – there are heaps of resources, courses, and CPD opportunities, with more being added regularly.

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