Personal professional journeys.

It’s possible that you are reading this shortly after returning from the AOTA Annual Conference and Expo in Minneapolis. For those who were not able to attend, let me tell you a little about what the experience of “conferencing” is like—at least for me, a veteran of at least 20 conferences. In my early days as an occupational therapist, I attended Conference to hear about the newest assessments and interventions, to get a look at the individuals whose names are always in the occupational therapy literature, and to understand more about where my profession is going. As a home-care therapist, this was only one of a handful of opportunities to be with likeminded individuals and stay in touch with what was happening in my profession. I usually came home from Conference with new shoes (there is always shopping involved) and fatter (eating is a main event too), but recharged about ideas that I thought were exciting and new. As the years went on, I began to present my ideas at Conference and in doing so, joined a network of occupational therapists who have similar interests. Currently I attend only selected sessions, but spend the majority of my time networking with colleagues and meeting new people. This is extraordinarily valuable to my professional growth as gives me the opportunity to learn more about what other occupational therapists are thinking and doing, plus learn a bit about myself in the process. I’m convinced that if you feel stalled or are disheartened by the work you are doing as an occupational therapist, try attending Conference to boost your enthusiasm. Occupational therapists seem to need to talk with other occupational therapists about what they are doing. Even my husband had noticed and commented on the fact that when occupational therapists get together, they talk about their work (what he actually said was, “You all sound like a flock of birds calling “OTee. OTee.”). This tendency was confirmed by Mattingly and Fleming (1994) in their findings about clinical reasoning processes described by occupational therapists. For the first time, this “underground practice” of reasoning, that includes talking to other therapists about clinical puzzles, seemed acceptable— even the right thing to do. Recognizing the importance of talking about practice, my colleague Laura Gitlin and I built in monthly debriefing sessions for occupational therapists working on our grants to discuss their thinking and knotty clinical problems. Attendance at these meetings was always very high and everyone agreed on their importance, both in terms of therapy itself but also as a mechanism for professional growth. Evidently this love of talking about self and practice has been apparent to Conference planners for some time since the annual Plenary Session is always an awe-inspiring presentation of personal or professional growth. As I listened to the 2003 Plenary Session (The Heart, Mind, and Soul of Professionalism in Occupational Therapy) presented by Dr. Wendy Wood, I thought about how uplifting this type of thinking would be for all occupational therapists, not just those who could attend Conference. I had just accepted the position of AJOT editor the week prior, so I asked Wendy Wood if she would consider being an associate editor for a new department that focuses on professional growth. This department is an invited forum for the personal and professional journeys of individuals who have demonstrated exemplary leadership in the field over the course of a substantial career, whether as clinicians, researchers, educators, or some combination. Dr. Wood captured the vision of this department in her letter of invitation to our first invited scholar, Dr. Betty 58_3_241_248AJOT 5/3/04 2:25 PM Page 247