While holistic care is fundamental to occupational therapy (OT) practice, organizational and systemic factors often push for compartmentalized and specialist practice. Because services in many practice areas are compartmentalized, occupational therapy practitioners’ (OTPs) continuing professional development (CPD) efforts typically focus on one clinical specialty, and many often do not learn skills across different clinical areas. It is imperative that OTPs continue to learn and integrate knowledge across specialty areas so as to provide comprehensive and holistic care to all individuals who seek OT services.
In addition to this, there is a known knowledge-to-practice gap that limits the implementation of research into practice. Numerous research studies (Summers et al. 2015; Stewart et al. 2020; Jones et al. 2015; Thomas et al. 2020) support the need for active engagement in CPD, implementing the most recent research into practice, and maintaining a holistic and integrated approach to healthcare. However, many clinicians experience barriers to the implementation of that knowledge, such as time, cost, staffing, and organizational influence. Healthcare organizations, on the other hand, must function in a competitive healthcare industry, by optimizing client outcomes while maintaining qualified and engaged staff. Occupational Therapists Fostering Unified Expertise and Learning (OT F.U.E.L.) was designed with these barriers in mind, and addresses them by creating a cost-effective, timely, and engaging platform for knowledge exchange across the profession of occupational therapy.
OT F.U.E.L. is designed as an online community of practice, focusing on intra-professional social learning and knowledge implementation for OTPs working in the various siloed specialties of OT, including pediatrics, orthopedics/hand therapy, inpatient/outpatient rehabilitation, and mental health. The objective is to reconnect with the common roots and approaches of occupational therapy, and enhance practice skills and expertise — integrating clinical knowledge and skills from various clinical specialties across the profession. Overall group size will be limited to 16 participants, with subspecialty groups of approximately four members to ensure diversity of experience. The groups will be moderated by a “knowledge broker” who can facilitate interconnections between the specialty areas.
There will be three phases to the piloting of this program. In the initial pilot (Phase 1), participants will be OTPs who are also fieldwork educators (FWEs), recruited using established affiliations with an entry-level Master of Occupational Therapy program. For the pilot, FWEs will be recruited through their employer in order to get organizational buy-in for their engagement in the program, as well as encouragement from management to participate. A secondary objective for this approach is to demonstrate the value of organizational support of professional development during established work hours. Phase 2 of piloting will involve running the program through other Universities in a variety of regions within the United States. Phase 3 will be potential dissemination through the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA).
Ultimately, OT F.U.E.L is expected to result in several intermediate and long-term outcomes, including OTPs increased the confidence and competence with integrating skills and concepts across specialty areas in their practice. By reducing the barriers and facilitating the implementation of new knowledge, the clients will benefit, and likely demonstrate improved outcomes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/46612 |
| Date | 24 August 2023 |
| Creators | Pollari, Elsie Hurtado |
| Contributors | Slater, Craig E. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
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