Occupational therapist CV template and example

This occupational therapist CV template follows progression from therapy assistant to rotational and community rehabilitation roles. The Word example includes occupational assessment, goal planning, multidisciplinary work and service improvement. The guide explains how to present clinical reasoning and relevant evidence for different OT settings and career stages.

Filename: FreeCVDownload_Occupational_Therapist.docx

Content of this CV template

How to write an occupational therapist CV

An occupational therapist CV should show how you help people participate in the activities that matter to them. Employers need to understand the people and settings you know, your clinical reasoning and the responsibility you take for assessment, intervention and review.

A list of conditions or equipment gives only part of that picture. Connect your experience to occupational needs, decisions and outcomes, then select the evidence that fits the service you want to join.

Make registration, qualification and clinical focus easy to find

State your HCPC registration status near the start of the CV and give your qualifying occupational therapy award, institution and completion date in the qualifications section. Professional-body membership can be listed separately. Registration and membership convey different information.

The HCPC’s occupational therapy standards provide a useful reference for the profession’s scope and expectations. On the CV, translate your professional experience into specific evidence of assessment, reasoning, communication, review and development.

Introduce your main setting and level of experience. Adult community rehabilitation, acute inpatient care, mental health, paediatrics and social-care adaptations each call for a different emphasis. Hannah’s example establishes adult rehabilitation and nine years after qualification, rather than trying to cover every OT specialism.

Describe a caseload in terms that help the recruiter assess it

Give the service context, population and typical complexity. A caseload figure can help, but explain whether it describes active community cases, a ward-based allocation or a particular programme. Frequency of contact and assessment demands affect what that figure means.

Include the occupational difficulties that are central to the work: personal care, domestic tasks, returning to roles, managing routines, school participation or access to the community. Relevant physical, cognitive, psychological and environmental factors can then give the reader a fuller picture.

Show how you organise competing needs. Prioritisation, urgent referrals, review dates, delegation and escalation can all demonstrate responsibility. For a senior role, include how you support the team’s caseload decisions as well as your own.

Make clinical reasoning visible in employment examples

Choose examples that connect assessment to a decision and a meaningful goal. You might explain how observation of a daily activity, discussion with the person and information about their environment shaped the intervention or referral you recommended.

A useful bullet could describe adapting a rehabilitation plan around fatigue and home routines, or coordinating further assessment when cognition affected a proposed discharge arrangement. Keep the focus on the judgement and your contribution rather than giving a step-by-step account of treatment.

Models and assessment tools should support that account. If you use the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure, explain its place in identifying priorities and reviewing the person’s perceived performance and satisfaction. If MOHOST is relevant to your practice, connect it to assessment of occupational functioning and planning.

Give named tools, training and applied experience where they help match the person specification. A long sequence of abbreviations is less useful than a few well-chosen examples showing how assessment information informed your work.

Show occupational outcomes and service improvements

Describe progress in terms that fit the person’s goals and the service. This may involve participation in a daily activity, confidence using an agreed strategy, a reviewed equipment arrangement or progress against an outcome measure.

When using figures, state the group, period and measure. A service audit might compare documentation completeness across two defined samples. A rehabilitation review might report progress against agreed goals for a specific programme. Explain your part in a team result.

Hannah’s goal-recording audit uses two samples of 30 records and a clearly defined documentation measure. Her earlier equipment-referral example compares two four-week checks. Both demonstrate practical improvement without requiring a broad claim about the whole service’s performance.

Qualitative evidence can also be strong. A concise example of enabling a person to resume a valued routine, improving a handover or resolving a difficult coordination issue may communicate the value of your work better than a percentage.

Adapt the clinical evidence to the setting

Acute and discharge roles: bring forward functional assessment, prioritisation, clinical reasoning about support needs, equipment and communication with the receiving service. Explain your contribution to discharge planning and how you worked with the person, carers and multidisciplinary team.

Community rehabilitation and social care: show home-context assessment, enablement, review of daily activities, equipment or adaptations and collaboration across health and care services. Where major adaptations form part of your work, identify your assessment and recommendation responsibilities and the partners involved.

Mental health: give evidence of occupational formulation, routines, participation, recovery goals, individual or group intervention and risk-aware planning. Describe work with ward or community colleagues and how you review engagement and progress.

Children and schools: focus on participation in learning, play, self-care and everyday routines. Show collaboration with children, families, teachers and other professionals, including how recommendations or programmes are carried into the child’s usual environment. Relevant EHCP work, staff training and specialist learning can support the account.

Specialist physical-health services: identify the clinical population and the occupational consequences you work with. Neurological, hand-therapy or other specialist experience should be described through the assessment, intervention and review responsibilities appropriate to that service.

Explain the collaboration around the intervention

“Worked in an MDT” becomes more useful when you show what you contributed. You may bring occupational assessment findings to a meeting, coordinate an equipment plan, clarify a person’s priorities or agree the next steps with another service.

Family and carer communication deserves similar detail. Examples can show how you explained recommendations, gathered information about routines or reviewed whether an arrangement was working at home. For school roles, the equivalent evidence may involve staff consultation and supporting implementation in class.

Documentation and systems matter because they support continuity. Name the electronic record systems you use and connect them to assessments, plans, review records or handovers. Hannah’s CV includes SystmOne alongside clinical review and audit experience.

Present risk, consent and professional judgement through practice

Use relevant examples of balancing participation, choice and safety. The CV can show how you recognised a concern, discussed options, sought specialist input or contributed to a coordinated plan. Keep the description focused on your responsibility and reasoning.

Relevant learning in safeguarding, consent, capacity, moving and handling or lone working can be listed with dates. Where legislation or local pathways are central to the vacancy, explain your experience of applying them in that setting. The applicable framework may differ across the UK.

Clinical examples work best as short professional summaries. Include enough context to explain the complexity and outcome while keeping the focus on your contribution.

Show development from student to specialist or supervisor

Newly qualified applicants can use a selected placement section with setting, dates, population and a few examples of assessment, intervention and reflection. Explain the work undertaken under supervision and how your responsibility developed. A relevant project, dissertation or service contribution can add useful evidence.

For rotational posts, make the rotations visible. A single employer entry can list the settings and dates or durations, followed by selected examples. This helps a recruiter assess breadth without repeating the same core duties under every rotation.

For Band 6 or other senior roles, bring forward autonomous caseload management, complex decisions, supervision, delegation, student education and improvement work. Give the scope: who you supervised, what you taught or which part of an audit you led.

At more advanced levels, include service leadership, specialist advice, pathways, workforce development or research where relevant. Job titles and banding provide context; the responsibilities and evidence explain readiness for the next post.

Select CPD that supports the application

List recent and relevant learning with the provider, date and completion status where useful. Formal qualifications, practice-educator development, specialist courses and workplace learning can all contribute, but they need different labels.

A short example of applying learning is valuable. You might describe how supervision or a course informed a revised assessment approach, a teaching session or a service review. This connects development to practice.

Give more space to the learning that matches the vacancy and keep routine updates compact. The CV template library offers different layouts for balancing clinical history, qualifications and selected evidence. A clear, occupation-focused account of your work is the central requirement.

Occupational Therapist CV FAQs