How can an entrepreneurial mind-set be encouraged among occupational therapy students? An example from Linköping University, Sweden.

Introduction The structures of social and health care are changing, and public health related problems in Western Europe are increasing, such as an increased elderly population, obesity and mental health problems in young people. In order to meet the need of the clients in occupational therapy practice we have to look into new ways to approach the changing times. A way to support the students’ preparedness for action in the field is to encourage the use of an entrepreneurial mindset through different learning methods. An entrepreneurial mindset is defined as “a way to see the possibilities and make something out of them”. Objectives To describe learning methods to raise awareness and promote an entrepreneurialmind-set among OT students and teachers.Description/ReportThe learning methods for the students varies from working with a specific design problem in groups, discussing literature about entrepreneurship in seminars and get supervision from Innovation office. To enhance the teachers awareness about entrepreneurial mind-set workshops about how to find new non-traditional fieldwork placements in a creative way was conducted. Results/Discussion Our experiences of how the entrepreneurial mind-set can be encouraged are that entrepreneurship can be looked upon in different ways and should be seen close to the reality that one work in. Follow-up from workshops with teachersas well evaluations from the students about the entrepreneurial mind set will be presented. Primary results show that students feel more prepared for a new and creative way of thinking and that teachers have more entrepreneurial mind-set than they think in the beginning. Conclusion An increased entrepreneurial mindset can be learned/trained and used as a way of dealing with the future challengesin the health care sector for occupational therapists.