The American Occupational Therapy Association’s (AOTA) Vision 2025 is a call to action for the occupational therapy profession to maximize the health, well-being, and quality of life of all people, populations, and communities through effective solutions that facilitate participation in everyday living (American Occupational Therapy Association, 2021). This vision aligns with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Triple Aim Framework which identifies improving the health of populations as one of three dimensions in its approach to optimizing the US health system’s performance (The IHI triple aim: IHI 2021). Unfortunately, there are a limited number of occupational therapy practitioners (OTPs) who work in community-based settings at the population-health level (Andreae et al., 2021).
For OTPs to contribute to achieving Vision 2025, they need to develop knowledge, skills and interest in working in this emerging practice area. It is up to academic institutions to create learning experiences for OT students that prepare them to identify and design a role for themselves and the profession in these non-traditional settings, as well as build the skills needed to succeed. A guideline for providing community-based experiences for OT students in a structured way would allow OT educators to ensure that graduating students have the skills they need to address the health and prevention needs of populations and communities, as well as the desire to do so. The proposed program is a practical, feasible guideline that occupational therapy educators and academic fieldwork coordinators can use to prepare students to meet population health needs through implementing service-learning as level 1 fieldwork.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/44414 |
| Date | 10 May 2022 |
| Creators | Velamoor, Tripta |
| Contributors | Perkins, Natalie, Jacobs, Karen |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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