Italy National OT News Archive

News from Italy, 2018

Dear colleagues this year is and will be a BIG year of changes. The most important changes are on:

public devices
professional registers

In Italy a lot of devices such as wheelchairs, orthosis, AAC communicators, shower chairs, hoists for transfer etc. are prescribed by the doctor after the OT evaluation and provided by the public health system. It means that the majority of the costs are covered by public funds (the State).

Until this year the codes to prescribe all the devices were referred to a text written in 1999. This text never changed in these years even if technologies are going fast. Finally, this year the public Health Ministry wrote a new document with new codes adding a lot of devices that in 1999 didn’t exist.

2018 is the year of another important milestone for our profession in Italy: a new register for all the healthcare professions has been made.
At this point, occupational therapists will be, for a numerical reason, in a register together with a lot of other health professions like PT, speech therapists, laboratory technicians, podiatrists, educators, acoustic aid technicians etc.

This will help us fight the illegal occupational therapy practice by different figures and practitioners. Actually, we are not totally sure of the exact evolution of our association after the setting of the register but…
Occupational therapists always face changes and react positively to them, and that’s what we are doing!

In mid-April we will be present at the Italian Health Exposition with some events, a booth and some workshops to promote the knowledge of our interesting and unique profession.

At this big exhibition we will display a photo contest that we organised for high school students on “disABILITY and the Occupational Therapist” to unknowledge pre-university students about OT and lead students to approach these themes and professions.

News from Italy 2016

The Italian association of OTs (AITO) is sorry to inform COTEC members that Francesco Della Gatta resigned from his presidential position.
We thank him for his great passion and the priceless amount of time he dedicated to AITO as President. The new AITO President is now Michele Senatore, who has been in the rehabilitation field for 20 years, working in different areas and teaching in the Occupational Therapy course at the University G. D’Annunzio of Chieti, in which he is even the coordinator of practical internships.

With the new executive committee AITO pointed out new goals :

Creating orientation courses for secondary-school students involving OT students and Universities, to acknowledge high school students about Occupational Therapy and our profession. In these orientation courses students will be guided to approach themes like disability and inclusivity through practical workshops, leaflets and visits to OT services;
Continue emphasizing and explaining to our health professional colleagues the importance of OT so that after seeing our competences, our value and the difference we can make to our clients quality of life, they can’t work without us anymore; and patients and clinical centres themselves will ask for our presence and spread information;
Continue organizing events and conferences ( for example health fairs and exhibitions) involving medical doctors and other professionals that could talk about OT and its value;
Strengthen our relationship with Universities of OT and encourage them to join ENOTHE;
AITO is constantly seeking collaboration with diseases associations and relatives.

After the event for the World OT day which was held in Chieti University and that strengthened our relationship with the University, raised a lot of consensus and approval for our profession and increased our number of supporters between medical health professionals, last month we had another great day and event: The Italian OT Day.
The Italian OT day was held in Bologna, a well reachable city from the entire Italian peninsula, at Expo Sanità organized in collaboration with the regional OT university course. (Health Expo: http://www.exposanita.it)
The title of the day was “The Occupational Therapist: competences for the free choice of a life project” and OT was presented from different points of view, different health professionals and fields (hospice, Parkinson approach, work re-integration, autonomy devices…)

We finally would like to encourage and remind to all European OTs that come to Italy to work and teach, to let us know, inform and contact us.
AITO will be very happy to help you and support you!

News from Italy, Spring 2011

In a few days the 3rd Edition of SITO’s (Scientific Society of OT) bi-annual National OT Congress will take place in Turin for a 3 day period. The theme of the Congress is The OT Process: clinical practice, research and education. On March 25th the General Assembly will take place to elect the new council of AITO. A new COTEC Delegate will be elected and thus my role as Delegate will end after 7 years. The present Alternate is running for the position and will most likely become the Delegate after the elections in Turin.

Our website has been updated with new courses and events and job offers are regularly posted. Colleagues interested in seeking work in Italy are encouraged to view the section “Offerte di lavoro”.

As always, for those interested in receiving the Italian Scientific Journal of OT entitled “Giornale Italiano di Terapia Occupazionale” (accronym: G.I.T.O.) write to gito@aito.it or log onwww.terapiaoccupazionale.it for costs and other informations.

For more details or to leave comments, visit our NA website www.aito.it

I wish the next Delegate all the best in her new position and hope to see many colleagues from COTEC in the near future.

Sincerely,
Silvio Tocco
Italian COTEC Delegate

News from Italy, 2011

The Association’s main efforts in the last 6 months were concentrated on restructuring the Executive to improve our relations with Government Institutions and our members. Thus, our new President is now Rosangela Licciardi, and Vice-President is Dario Ellena, which will hold their positions until Spring 2012, when new elections will be held. Another strategy that was opted for to improve communication with our members was the creation of a new website (same URL address www.aito.it ) which makes exchanges between the Council and its members easier and quicker. The creation of a Facebook Interest Group, called “AITO-SITO” is also gaining popularity.

Our 2011th National Congress (3rd Event organized by our Scientific Society, “SITO”) will take place in Turin on March 25-27th 2011. Call for papers is open until September 2011 and can be sent at abstractcongresso@terapiaoccupazionale.it. The theme of the event is “Occupational Therapy Process: Clinical, Research and Educational Approaches.” Please visit the following link for more details: http://terapiaoccupazionale.it/riv1a000082.htm. Any other OT educational events can be searched on our scientific portalwww.terapiaoccupazionale.it under “Formazione ECM” and “Notizie ed Eventi” sections.

For those interested in receiving the Italian bi-annual Scientific Journal of OT entitled “Giornale Italiano di Terapia Occupazionale” (accronym: G.I.T.O.) write toinfo@terapiaoccupazionale.it or log on to www.terapiaoccupazionale.it for costs and other informations.

On a final note, our OT Schools are working together to merge some of the common medical courses within the OT Bachelor Degree with other professional Degrees, such as Physiotherapy, Speech Therapy and other Italian regulated health professions. The objective of this maneuver is to reduce costs for all Universities and encourage Inter-Professional exchange and knowledge, with the hope of reducing false beliefs and professional ignorance amongst the various rehabilitation professions in our country. These changes should be in place as of 2012 in most of the 13 OT Schools in Italy.

As always, for more details or to leave comments, visit our NA website www.aito.it or contact me via e-mail.

Sincerely,
Silvio Tocco
Italian COTEC Delegate
COTEC Honorary Secretary
cotec@aito.it
silvio.tocco@cotec-europe.org

News from Italy, 2010

This year’s Member’s Assembly will be held in Verona on March 12th to elect the new council of SITO (Società Italiana dei Terapisti Occupazionali). Unlike last year, there will not be an Italian OT Congress in 2010 but a two day seminar on the Canadian Model of Occupational Performance and Engagement (CMOP-E), in Romeo & Juliet’s home town Verona, which will take place on March 12th and 13th 2010. Indeed, during these 2 days, Dr. Helene Polatjko and Dr. Rose Martini will be teaching a two day course on the CMOP-E.Prior to arriving to Verona they will be teaching a 2 day course on the Cognitive Orientation to Occupational Performance on March 9 and 10, 2010 in Rome.

In addition, SITO has organized various continuing education courses for 2010 in an attempt to develop the competencies of OT’s in Italy. On June 26th and 27th 2010, Dr. Gary Kielhofner and Dr. Renee Taylor will be in Napoli to hold a 2 day seminar on “Achieving true client-centered practice”. Then in September 2010 the third AMPS course will be held in Italy. Other courses currently planned include a continuing education course for OT’s who work in the field of psychiatry in October 2010. Also, SITO is also starting to organize seminars to emphasize evidence-based practice and teach OT basic research skills, in an attempt to encourage occupational therapists to start being involved in research. The first course will be held in January or February 2011.

On a more socio-political note, AITO (Associazione Italiana dei Terapisti Occupazionali) has reached the goal of maintaining their professional education independence after political talks of reducing the number of OT schools and courses as part of the Health Care reform. Indeed, all 13 Italian schools remain functional and are working towards a common goal of reducing University costs through education curriculum reorganization.

Finally, there is still no official news about the instauration of Professional Orders for the rehabilitation professions but the legislative decree is presently under study by the Italian Senate. While its’ official approval is pending, it is with satisfaction that AITO and SITO have registered their respective updated Constitutions last week, after more than 3 years of work by the present and previous council members.

For those interested in receiving the Italian bi-annual Scientific Journal of OT entitled “Giornale Italiano di Terapia Occupazionale” (acronym: G.I.T.O.) write to info@terapiaoccupazionale.it or log on www.terapiaoccupazionale.it for costs and other information.

As always, for more details or to leave comments, visit our NA website www.aito.it

Sincerely,
Silvio Tocco
Italian COTEC Delegate