Fiona Loudoun

PhD Candidate - ESR 4

Fiona graduated from the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland in 2007.  Since then she has predominately worked as an Occupational Therapist within the field of Child Health, providing specialist assessment and intervention. With the introduction of Ready to Act (Scottish Government, 2015), Fiona was actively involved in her local area in the provision of universal interventions to support whole groups of children, utilising the school context to facilitate this.  This balance between specialist, targeted and universal interventions is critical in supporting whole populations as well as increasing awareness of the role and scope of the occupational therapy profession and was consequently the focus of her research for her MSc. 

Fiona has recently completed her MSc in Quality Improvement; developing research skills within clinical practice.  As part of her MSc, a qualitative research project was completed exploring teacher’s experiences of, and opinions about, a universal handwriting intervention.  This research identified that the knowledge and skills gained by practitioners through their participation impacted positively on the experiences provided to children within early years’ settings and their understanding of the role of occupational therapy as well as their will to collaborate.  This research comprehensively explored teachers’ perspectives which have largely been ignored in handwriting research to date and guided service improvement and delivery of evidence-based intervention within clinical practice.