Dr. Hashem Abu Tariah Participates in (AOTA) Conference.
Dr. Hashem Abu Tariah, Associate Professor of Occupational Therapy (OT), from the department of OT attended the 95th Annual Conference & Expo of the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA). The conference was held in Nashville, Tennessee from April 16-19.
The conference was the largest conference in the world in the field of OT with 8500 participants from all over the world. In addition to attending valuable sessions about OT and speeches from well-known leaders of OT, Dr. Abu Tariah had the chance to meet with the President of the World Federation of Occupational Therapist (WFOT) and the Vice President Finance for the WFOT and briefed them about the Saudi Occupational Therapy Association (SOTA) as well as the OT program of the KSAU.
A plan was set to start working on getting an accreditation/approval from the WFOT for our OT program as well as getting SOTA a full membership.
This will need efforts from both the SOTA and the program to start preparing the needed documents for that.
Getting WFOT accreditation/approval for our program as well as a full membership for the SOTA at the WFOT is a very important step for Saudi OT students, graduates, professionals, and the profession of OT in the Kingdom. Dr. Abu Tariah also had the chance to meet with two Saudi students who are continuing their Master’s degree in OT from the USA. He also initiated some links to recruit some faculty staff for our program that need to be communicated to the program director as well as the dean to start the process.
