OT connections is a general forum based in America that allows occupational therapy professionals, students and any other public internet users to share, interact, and connect with one another. This forum is open to all web users (even outside the states) who have interest in the said field, from practitioner to OT consumer.
A thread started by a credible man in the field (with PhD, OTR/L, and FAOTA) relates to the occupational justice when he raised a topic regarding OT role’s limitation. Further, conversation regarding AOTA has played a vital role in determining the practitioner’s impact on rehabilitating a client.
People can contribute by signing into the forum and posting up questions, facts and other information. The site looks very interactive; for the given thread above for instance, it received more than 10 replies in one day and has 206 replies and 22 followers (as of today, 9/4/12). That is for a single topic. People give different opinions on the said topic.
The Student-doctor network is a non-profit forum organization that helps pre-health disciplines to access, share, and ask questions on the site. The site is more common for various disciplines (students and professionals) across the US and Canada. For each topic, there is a sub forum that contains specific achieves on the topic of interest. For instance, a sub-forum has been made for occupational therapy field. Where topics like what school to go to and medical terminologies-defined etc. were talked about and replied on. This site relates to occupational transition for practitioners. Transitional cycle from a student-to-be to student to being registered professional. Also, the transition of a single point of view to other discipline point of view is possible (e.g. from OT point of view to nurses, PT or doctor's point of view- just like in MDT meetings). Registration on the site is the first step to interact with the community.
Last community site that I will be covering is the Workers compensation insurance forum. This site relates both to occupational disruption (temporarily disrupted by an injury) and occupational deprivation (permanent disrupted by an injury). The site contains links that directs to worker’s guidelines in terms of laws, injured worker’s stories and other links such as the injured worker’s forum. On the injured worker forum, people are able to discuss their situation with other injured workers and receive suggestion, ideas and advice. Just like the other two sites, by signing in, one can access the site and can then share information within the members.
Why people choose to contribute to each community?
I myself actually signed into numbers of automotive forum such as preludezone.com, nzhondas.com, rx8club, Subaru forum (NZ) and more to gain knowledge on specific things I want to know e.g. what exhaust system goes better in this car or is buying Mazda rx8 worth it due to the fact it gulps a lot of gas, or what sort of oil to use in specific engine, those sorts of things. In health field, it’s the same. People who have acquired certain injuries would communicate with the people who have the same limitations as they do.
Based from my experience, I can identify two types of members in a forum (don’t quote me on this one) there is this expert who seems to know everything/some based from reading articles or from own experience, and there is this one who seems to eagerly wants to know everything before doing anything (to avoid mistakes and double-handling sort of thing).
Obviously, people who are signed in to the forums either wants to learn, share or expand their understanding or maybe mixed of everything, for example in SDN, members want to know which University offers the best Occupational Therapy course to ensure they can have the best learning opportunity.
Ethical issues and benefits that may arise from these communities...
All these forum threads are publicly made. Which means getting involved in a conversation is being limited. Imagine, why you would sign in if you can just scroll the mouse and click the threads and voila-you have the information you wanted, unless you want to share and explore your prior knowledge. Public sites have the chance to limit the interactions between people with common likes and interests.
What majority says seemed to be true or believable. This is another issue that forums have. Unless you are a registered member, you can message privately another member and ask for their credibility and how and why they acquire their knowledge.
Having said that interaction and credibility is an issue, people who want the answer ‘now’ benefit from public sites. A browser who is not willing to sign in or register and thinks can save time; he/she can find the answer straight away and move on. It’s faster!
Knowing other culture’s point of view is another good thing about this World Wide Web. People across the world can access a community’s online forum as long as it can be viewed publicly. Not just one gains knowledge, but also learns something from people around the world. But the thing is, although these people are from around the world they have a lot in common. From my own example on the automotive forums, I can see myself similar to one in America or in South Africa and in fact I’m Filipino and based in New Zealand. Just like browsing things in occupational therapy world, across the globe you’ll see words such as ‘kitchen assessment’ and ‘ADLs’ around OT related sites.
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