British Journal of Occupational Therapy

A qualitative study was undertaken to explore occupational therapists' experiences following a continuing professional education course to learn how to use the Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS). This paper describes the challenges and barriers they faced when adopting it within existing professional practice. Twenty-two occupational therapists from 16 National Health Service trusts across the United Kingdom who had attended an AMPS course took part in a series of three semi-structured interviews over a 9-month period. The data were analysed inductively; six themes and a number of subthemes emerged.

Three themes are explored in this paper: adopting the AMPS into professional practice, the diffusion of innovation and the embedding of new skills in clinical teams. Using the voices of the participants in the study, the findings explore some of the barriers to learning new skills and to utilising them within workplace teams. Overall, the therapists were able to overcome these barriers if they had sufficient personal motivation and workplace support from either their manager or the clinical team.

The spread of a new idea and its adoption into current practice are complex and affected by many factors. Research evidence alone may not be enough to persuade individuals and teams to change: additional resources of leadership, skills and time also appear essential to success.

Previous time-use research suggests that it is highly relevant for an occupational therapist to estimate time use and occupational engagement in order to understand some of the determinants of wellbeing for people with schizophrenia. This article describes the development and the testing of the psychometric properties of an instrument, Profiles of Occupational Engagement in people with Schizophrenia (POES), with the aim of helping to interpret and evaluate time-use diaries and thus providing a systematic description of status regarding occupational engagement. The first part of POES involves completion of time-use diaries and the second part, the assessment, is based on nine items that are rated on a four-point ordinal scale.

The time-use diaries of 41 people with schizophrenia and the judgements from 12 occupational therapists were used in the study. A test of content validation involved experts from Sweden and the United Kingdom and resulted in two stages of revisions. The strength of agreement between two raters resulted in a mean weighted kappa of 0.70. Internal consistency was calculated for both raters separately and the alpha coefficients were 0.97 and 0.95.

This study provides initial support for the content validity, interrater agreement and internal consistency of POES. Based on the judgements of the occupational therapists in this study, POES seems to have good clinical utility. However, further research on the clinical utility as well as the criterion validity of the construct is warranted.

Sexuality is an integral part of human life; however, people with disabilities often report an unsatisfying sexual life. The aim of this study was both to explore the reasons for the reported unsatisfying life and to reframe it in terms of occupational injustice and denial of participation in meaningful occupation.

In-depth interviews were carried out with six men with a spinal cord injury. Thematic analysis was applied to the data and formed the basis for the textural description of the participants' experiences.

The study participants generally found that certain societal beliefs and attitudes had an impact on their participation in sexuality-related occupations. They were experiencing occupational injustice as a result of the restriction of engagement in meaningful occupation. Impairment per se was usually not perceived as a barrier to a fulfilling sexual life.

The study concluded that occupational therapists should embrace occupational justice as the main purpose of the profession and include issues of sexuality in their agenda.

In occupational therapy, theorising is an integral part of practice and theory is shaped by practice. This paper suggests that we do theory by developing collaborative models of thoughtful practice that work within specific contexts. It begins by looking at how the nature of professionalism is changing in response to social and political changes. It argues that any claim to professional status is based on the ability to make informed and authoritative judgements. Professional judgements are described as complex and morally purposeful and as being made within a social context. The paper then addresses how thoughtfulness relates to professional practice. Three dimensions of thoughtfulness are discussed: the deliberative, the public and the reflexive. The final section of the paper considers what theory means for professional practitioners; that is, how occupational therapists use theory in order to theorise our own practice.

Undergraduate education programmes play a major role in the development of the profession; providing practice placement education opportunities across a range of settings prepares graduates for the diversity of practice. This paper describes a practice placement education model, developed in South Australia, which enables graduates to work effectively from a primary health care or social health perspective to engage actively with the paradigm shift occurring in health.

The model consists of three phases. Phase one comprises academic input relating to social health philosophy and the link with occupational therapy, as well as knowledge and skills in project management. Phase two allows students to explore a range of community-based agencies and potential project opportunities. Phase three involves the implementation and evaluation of a project aimed at addressing a specified need in the community in a sustainable manner. A synopsis of several projects is provided to demonstrate the variety of agencies and issues that can be addressed using such a model.

The publication of the research governance frameworks for health and community/social care since 2001 has provided a guideline of standards and accountability for the conduct of research and research-related activity that applies to both health and community/social care contexts. The frameworks are also offered as models of governance to be used by non-governmental organisations involved in research activity in health and social care. This paper outlines the College of Occupational Therapists' arrangements for ethical review of its own research and related activity.