Occupational Therapist CV Examples & Writing Guide

This is a mid-career Band 6 OT on an inpatient stroke and neurorehabilitation unit with some acute ward cover. The name and the services are made up. Notice how early the registration, band, setting and caseload appear. A therapy manager reads in that order because it tells them whether you can hold a full caseload next month.

Therapy services recruit against an open caseload and pressure on beds. The manager wants to know how fast you can carry that caseload alone, and whether your notes and outcome scoring will stand up to audit.

• HCPC registration. Say you are registered and since when. If you are waiting for registration, as a new graduate or after training abroad, give the date you applied.
• Band and experience. Write the band for each post. A Band 6 applicant with rotational Band 5 experience reads very differently from someone who has worked in one setting only.
• Setting and client group. Acute, inpatient rehab, intermediate care, community, social care, mental health, children's services and hand therapy are different jobs. Name yours and the conditions you see.
• Caseload. Patients per day or open cases, and how quickly you complete assessments. In community and intermediate care these are the numbers the manager is measured on.
• Outcomes. Discharge destination, goal achievement, length of stay, falls, EHCP outcomes met. One real outcome beats a paragraph of philosophy.
• Record systems. SystmOne, RiO, EMIS, Cerner Millennium, Epic, Lorenzo or a local authority case system. Naming the system saves them training time.

“Tell me the setting, the caseload and one outcome, and I can picture you on my unit. Most OT CVs give me a values statement and a list of interventions instead. Eight to ten patients a day at eighty-eight per cent productivity with seventy-one per cent home discharges tells me more than a whole page of adjectives.”

In the UK you need an HCPC-approved occupational therapy qualification and HCPC registration. Everything above that is optional and belongs on your CV only if you hold it.

• Degree: a BSc (Hons) or pre-registration MSc in Occupational Therapy, or a degree apprenticeship, approved by the HCPC and usually accredited by RCOT, with the year and, for a BSc, the classification.
• HCPC registration: "occupational therapist" is a protected title. Registration is renewed every two years with a declaration that you keep up your CPD, so keep a CPD record you can produce if audited.
• No regional licence: HCPC registration covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so moving between UK nations does not need a new application.
• BAOT/RCOT membership and RCOT specialist sections (for example neurological practice, mental health, or children, young people and families). List membership if you hold it; it is not required to practise.
• Postgraduate study: MSc modules or certificates in neurorehabilitation, vocational rehabilitation, sensory integration or similar, with the year completed or expected.
• Hand therapy: accreditation through the British Association of Hand Therapists comes after several years of practice and approved training. Write "working towards" until it is awarded.
• Programme training: LSVT BIG, Bobath courses, AMPS calibration, seating and posture courses, moving and handling trainer status.
• Basic life support and moving and handling, required as mandatory training by almost every NHS employer from day one.

Three or four lines under your name. Setting, client group, caseload, one outcome, one qualification. Skip the philosophy of practice; save that for the supporting statement and the interview.

OT CVs tend to describe the profession rather than the person. 'Provided occupational therapy input' is true of every OT alive. Add the condition, the number, the tool or the result.

Group the list by assessment, intervention and systems, and put the advert's terms first. A hand therapy service and a children's service want completely different lists.

• Assessment: ADL and extended ADL assessment, manual muscle testing, goniometry, sensory processing and cognitive screening, and standardised measures such as the COPM, AMPS, Berg Balance Scale and Nine Hole Peg Test
• Adult intervention: neurorehabilitation after stroke and brain injury, task-specific training, tone management, serial casting and orthosis fabrication, fatigue management, falls prevention
• Paediatric intervention: sensory integration, fine motor and handwriting programmes, eating and drinking skills, self-regulation, play-based intervention, EHCP outcome writing
• Equipment: equipment provision, wheelchair seating and posture, home adaptation recommendations, assistive technology and switch access
• Documentation: SystmOne, RiO, EMIS, Cerner Millennium, Epic, FIM+FAM and Barthel scoring, care plans and progress notes
• Professional: practice education, MDT meetings, carer and family training, discharge planning, delegating to and co-treating with therapy assistants
• Practice knowledge: Care Act 2014 assessments in social care, the EHCP process in England, discharge to assess pathways, NICE stroke rehabilitation guidance

Leave out 'compassionate' and 'person-centred'. Occupational therapy is person-centred by definition, so the words take up space without adding information.

This is the most searched version of the OT CV, and the fix is simple: your placements are your experience. UK programmes include at least 1,000 hours of practice placement, roughly six to seven months of supervised clinical work, so write them like jobs.

1. 1Put your degree, graduation month and HCPC registration status at the top. Managers plan start dates around registration.
2. 2List each long placement as its own entry: service type, setting, dates, and what your caseload had grown to by the end.
3. 3Quantify the placements. Patients per day, assessments completed, plans written, groups run, staff or carers you trained.
4. 4Include short early placements only if they add a setting your longer placements do not cover.
5. 5Add your dissertation or service improvement project with what it produced and who used it.
6. 6Keep earlier jobs that show clinical exposure: therapy assistant, rehab assistant, healthcare assistant, carer, support worker.
7. 7State your registration plan in plain words: HCPC application submitted, and when you expect to be on the register.

Rewrite the top third for each setting you apply to. The personal statement, the first three bullets and the skills order should match the job you want.

• Acute: medical complexity, lines and precautions, early mobility, fast assessment turnaround and discharge recommendations.
• Stroke and neurorehabilitation: conditions, FIM+FAM or Barthel scoring, SSNAP data, discharge destination and family training.
• Intermediate care and community hospitals: caseload, length of stay, discharge to assess, reablement and falls reduction.
• Outpatient orthopaedics and hand therapy: post-surgical protocols, orthosis fabrication, grip and pinch measurement, QuickDASH scores and patients per day.
• Community and social care: lone working, home safety assessment, equipment and adaptations, Care Act assessments and the size of your patch.
• Children's services in schools: pupil caseload, EHCP outcome writing, teacher consultation and the number of schools you cover.
• Early years: under-fives, coaching parents at home and in nursery, family goals and the number of families on your caseload.
• Mental health: group programmes, functional skills training, safety planning, and the conditions and age groups you cover.

Two pages is the UK norm for qualified therapists and new graduates alike. Plain single-column layout, no photo, no date of birth, no skill bars. Many NHS posts go through NHS Jobs or Trac, so reuse your strongest bullets in the supporting information.

• Write your registration as a phrase a system can match: 'HCPC registered', 'Occupational Therapist', 'BSc (Hons) Occupational Therapy', 'Band 6'.
• Mirror the advert: 'ADL', 'functional assessment', 'care plan', 'discharge planning', 'caseload', 'EHCP', 'sensory integration', 'splinting', 'rotational', and the record system they name.
• Give the setting in each job title line, not only in the bullets: 'Occupational Therapist (Band 6), Inpatient Stroke and Neurorehabilitation Unit (42 beds)'.
• Use month and year dates. Bank, agency and locum work is normal in this field; label it rather than leaving a gap.
• Put HCPC registration and mandatory training where a recruiter can see it without scrolling, and update the dates before you send it.

Read the top back as if you were the manager with a vacancy on a stroke unit next month. If setting, registration and caseload are not clear by line five, move them up.