The involvement of the occupational therapist in medico-legal work or third party
claims is not a new phenomenon. Research in this area however previously
focused on the skills and other traits of the occupational therapist. Little is known
about the legal professionâs knowledge and expectations regarding the
occupational therapist serving as an expert witness, especially in the South African
legal, economic, social and cultural context. Discovering how especially attorneys
perceive and experience the role of the occupational therapist in medico-legal work
is therefore essential as occupational therapistsâ involvement in medico-legal work
is mostly facilitated by attorneys who instruct medico-legal assessments. The
process and methods of instructing and utilising expert witnesses such as
occupational therapists is unfortunately often not optimally effective with potentially
dire effects for a country such as South Africa which already battles with poverty
and unemployment, especially under workers with disabilities.
International research has furthermore placed an increased emphasis on the role of
the occupational therapist in encouraging and working towards aspects such as
various forms of occupational justice and the impact of a personâs inability or
altered ability to participate in occupations as before injury or illness. Therefore,
against a backdrop of changing legislation regarding third party claims and an
increase in medical negligence claims, the scope and role of occupational therapy
in this field was explored and defined in this study, based on information obtained
directly from members of the South African legal profession. Barriers between the
occupational and legal profession that could hinder fair compensation for the
claimants, such as communication transgressions or ineffective service delivery,
were also identified.
This study aimed to gather such information by means of a quantitative study under
South African trained and based attorneys. A nominal group was used to support
questionnaire development and also served to encourage the researcher that aspects addressed in this study through the questionnaire was vital to the everyday
practice of the South African occupational therapist performing medico-legal
assessments and reports. Research results indicated that attorneys have distinct
expectations from the occupational therapist, but that some confusion exists
pertaining to the unique role and contribution of the occupational therapist
compared to other health professions. Where attorneys appeared to have a
generally good understanding of terminology used by occupational therapists in
assessment reports, several occupation therapy specific terms had different
meanings for the legal profession. Recommendations made based on this study
are believed by the researcher to address the specific problems identified in this
study and should encourage future research in this field.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufs/oai:etd.uovs.ac.za:etd-06192013-152126 |
| Date | 19 June 2013 |
| Creators | Jansen van Vuuren, Mariechén |
| Contributors | Mrs T Rauch-van der Merwe, Mrs PA Hough |
| Publisher | University of the Free State |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en-uk |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.uovs.ac.za//theses/available/etd-06192013-152126/restricted/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University Free State or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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