{"id":6377,"date":"2026-11-02T11:31:03","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T11:31:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/02\/experts-task-occupational-therapists-on-professional-identity-leadership-collaboration-businessday-ng\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T11:31:03","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T11:31:03","slug":"experts-task-occupational-therapists-on-professional-identity-leadership-collaboration-businessday-ng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/02\/experts-task-occupational-therapists-on-professional-identity-leadership-collaboration-businessday-ng\/","title":{"rendered":"Experts task occupational therapists on professional identity, leadership, collaboration \u2013 Businessday NG"},"content":{"rendered":"

Occupational Therapy Practitioners have been called upon to strengthen their professional identity, embrace effective leadership, deepen institutional collaboration and reposition their association to gain greater recognition and influence in national development.\n<\/p>\n

Oluwasegun Ayeni, the National President of OTAN, who made the call at the maiden Scientific Conference and Annual General Meeting of the association, stressed that national development could only be meaningful when every citizen, irrespective of disability or functional limitation, was empowered to participate in everyday activities.\n<\/p>\n

According to him, the conference theme \u201cSustainable Nation, Functional Individual: Leveraging Occupational Therapy for Functional Restoration of Individuals in Developing Countries,\u201d highlighted the importance of occupational therapy in helping individuals living with disabilities, injuries and terminal illnesses regain functional independence and participate meaningfully in everyday activities.\n<\/p>\n

Ayeni, who expressed concern over what he described as the longstanding perception of occupational therapy as a subordinate discipline to physiotherapy, noted that such misconceptions had affected the visibility, recognition and institutional growth of the profession.\n<\/p>\n

He described the gathering as a long-awaited achievement, coming more than two decades after the establishment of the association. He noted that it was the first official national gathering of occupational therapy practitioners, providing an opportunity for members across clinical, academic and private practice settings to exchange ideas, share experiences and address issues affecting the profession.<\/p>\n

Ayeni explained that occupational therapy plays a critical role in enabling individuals to access education, secure employment and contribute productively to society, stressing that people living with disabilities should not be deprived of opportunities to lead meaningful and independent lives.\n<\/p>\n

He, therefore, called for improved working conditions, competitive remuneration, expanded training opportunities and deliberate workforce retention strategies to prevent the migration of trained occupational therapists in search of better professional opportunities abroad.\n<\/p>\n

BusinessDay reports that the three-day conference, hosted at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Lagos, brought together occupational therapy practitioners, academics, researchers, students and other stakeholders to deliberate on the contributions of the profession to individual functionality, economic sustainability and national development.<\/p>\n

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Businessday NG<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Occupational Therapy Practitioners have been called upon to strengthen their professional identity, embrace effective leadership, deepen institutional collaboration and reposition their association to gain greater recognition and influence in national… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6378,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}