School of Occupational Therapy: About Us
Our Mission
The School of Occupational Therapy educates students who integrate the art and science of occupational therapy and creatively collaborate with clients to improve health and participation in life. Through active engagement in diverse learning opportunities in the classroom and community, students graduate as competent, ethical practitioners who incorporate best evidence to guide current practice and advance emerging practice. Thus, graduates of the program promote health and well-being through engagement in therapeutic occupations (everyday life activities) that enhance quality of life for persons in the communities where they live, work, and play.
VISION:
We envision a world in which our graduates use the skills, knowledge, art, and science of occupational therapy to promote social justice while delivering excellent services to enhance the quality of life of their clients.
VALUES:
Contextual Teaching & Learning
Students learn best through varied experiences in a range of environments that have direct application to the development of practice skills and understanding of human occupation.
Doing
By active engagement of mind, body, and spirit in interaction with the environment, persons learn, grow, and actualize life roles that bring meaning, satisfaction, and well-being.
Critical Reasoning
Critical thinking is essential for effective analysis, integration and synthesis of information and systems to enact best practice.
Transformation:
Occupation (engaging in meaningful daily activities) has the transformative power to enhance participation in life.
Ethical Practice
Sound ethical reasoning underlies and guides all that we do to maintain and promote high standards of practice.
Our Philosophy
The ultimate goal of an occupational therapy education is to prepare occupational therapists to serve people to participate in the full range of life’s everyday activities, or occupations that we believe will lead to improved health and well-being. Students in the School of Occupational Therapy collaborate with faculty to shape their student- and learning-centered educational experience in a way that helps them understand the elements of client-centered OT practice. The educational process is directed to equipping the professional student with a full repertoire of skills, a comprehensive knowledge base, and advanced critical thinking abilities with which to provide excellent and relevant services to their future clients and promote occupational justice for all. Occupational injustice occurs when people do not have equal opportunities to pursue meaningful and healthful occupations due to economic, political, geographical, or other constraints. Occupational therapists increase occupational justice when they empower individuals, communities, or governments to improve opportunities for people to do those occupations that will enhance their health, satisfaction, and meaning in life and is accomplished through many means such as advocacy, work for social justice, education, and public health promotion.
A primary belief within the School of Occupational Therapy is that in order to effectively address the complex problems and challenges facing people living in today’s world, health service providers, and occupational therapists in particular, need to practice from an integrated base of knowledge. An integrated practitioner blends empirical knowledge of traditional sciences with the humanistic knowledge from behavioral, social, and philosophical disciplines for holistic practice. Students also are provided with an in-depth understanding of occupation in order apply this most unique and powerful tool for promotion of health and well-being as the essential tool of occupational therapy. With this unique and complementary knowledge base, the student will also consider the person’s mind, body, and spirit needs, particularly the spirit for action through occupation, that supports the whole human experience for optimal living and doing.
It is increasingly evident that optimum attainment of health and well-being occurs best with active engagement of the client in the therapy process. Likewise, learning occurs best with active involvement of the learner. The School of Occupational Therapy curriculum immerses the student in active learning experiences throughout the curriculum that culminates with extensive full-time fieldwork experiences (more than 30 weeks) in which the student is mentored and guided into the field by practicing occupational therapists. As opportunities for fieldwork and practice increasingly include work with clients from diverse backgrounds, the curriculum assures the student will build a solid foundation of cultural competence and ethical reasoning.
Once the student has demonstrated competence in classroom and fieldwork courses, she or he develops projects that create innovative occupational therapy service plans and that envision creative future practices. These advanced projects are designed to address the needs of individuals or groups who typically would not have the option of occupational therapy services, yet are likely to benefit from an enhanced knowledge and role of occupation in their lives. In the program, students learn that there are many ways to achieve positive change, not only in the lives of their clients through effectively applied therapeutic occupation, but also how to improve society and health delivery systems through leadership and advocacy for occupational justice.
Design of the Curriculum:
The overall design of the curriculum can be likened to the creation of quilt (inspired by the donation of a beautiful quilt to the School by Theresa Fairfield, Class of 1992). Layers of knowledge are crafted one upon the other as a foundation to the many individual quilt squares that lead to a complex and beautiful pattern. The pattern represents the integration of the student’s knowledge, experiences, beliefs, and professional values into a full understanding and application of the occupational therapy process to promote wholeness, health, and well-being for those they serve. The newly emerged practitioner is then able to facilitate the client’s construction of his or her own quilt, helping the client to a new level of knowledge as an occupational being with enhanced adaptive abilities and greater participation in society for a healthier lifestyle through collaboration with occupational therapy.
The curriculum of the School of Occupational Therapy is designed to facilitate and guide the student to achieve the outcome objectives (listed above) while developing the knowledge, skills, values, and beliefs to practice as an integral scientist-practitioner (one skilled in applying the art and science of practice, Yerxa, 2005). This is accomplished through a carefully designed series of courses that help the student develop the skills to critically analyze the best available evidence to support practice decisions, balanced with content and courses that emphasize the humanistic aspects of the lives of their future clients. The first three and half semesters of the curriculum are designed to provide increasingly higher levels of knowledge and application of the occupational therapy process along with the biological, psychological, philosophical, systems analysis, and clinical reasoning foundations needed for challenging human problems and for practice in complex health care systems.
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In the first semester, the basic building blocks in the development of an integral practitioner are laid, 1) philosophy, 2) scholarship, 3) OT process, 4) science, and 5) clinical reasoning. The unique and most powerful tool for an occupational therapist is a thorough understanding of occupation. In the Foundations of Occupation and Occupational Science course (OT 400), students begin an in-depth exploration of the many ways that people occupy their time and the ways in which people attach meaning and purpose to their occupations. Through an examination of the history and philosophy of the profession and the leading theories used in OT, students build a foundation for thinking like an occupational therapist, and begin to view the world through an OT lens. The course also builds an understanding the personal, cultural, and environmental factors that shape a person’s occupations and examine the concept of occupational justice. The occupational therapy process of evaluation and intervention is introduced and explored simultaneously in OT 407 (OT Process with Younger Children) & 416 (Occupational Analysis), while the fundamental skills for evidence-based practice and scholarship are developed OT 418 (Scholarhips and Evidence-Based Practice). In the first course to focus on the OT process, there begins an examination of human development by studying early child development while also building the fundamentals of clinical reasoning (OT 407 in conjunction with OT 419-Seminar I: The OT Profession). Seminar courses each semester are designed to facilitate the development of professional behaviors and reasoning while providing a forum for the more explicit integration of course material, and in the first semester, this seminar course is OT 419.
The School of Occupational Therapy’s extensive fieldwork program begins with lab-related experiences in the first semester (in OT 407 & 416) which leads to full time Level I rotations in the first weeks of the second semester (OT 422- Level IA Fieldwork). In the second semester, practicum visits to OT practice settings help students apply the theoretical and technical knowledge they are building in the OT process courses (OT 433-OT Process with Older Children and Adolescents & OT Process with Adults with Physical 435, and Psychosocial 434-Challenges). The second and third semesters emphasize the development of skill in understanding and applying the OT process as well as more advanced basic science knowledge and application, along with technical skill development balanced with knowledge of key theories and practice models (OT 433, 434, 435, 530-OT Process with Older Adults, & 531- OT Process with Adults with Neurological Challenges). Simultaneously, students are exposed to opportunities to learn and apply ethical reasoning to cultural case examples that are increasingly more complex and diverse through service learning projects (OT 413-Seminar II: Leadership & Service & the OT process courses). An emphasis on the art of occupational therapy that begins primarily in OT 400 and 419 continues in OT 432 (Therapeutic Approaches for Client-centered Practice) as students learn interviewing skills, therapeutic use of self, and more about human motivation and behavior as well as their professional role in service and leadership (OT 413).
Students learn how to appraise and implement standardized assessment (OT 437- Standardized Assessments in Client-centered OT) across the lifespan and diagnostic categories while examining the role of occupation in people’s lives who are experiencing chronic disability, thus expanding an understanding of cultural difference based on disability (OT 438- Occupation &Adaptation for People Experiencing Disabilities). In the third semester, students learn more about health systems and services in order to more effectively work within and lead change for health care institutions and agencies and advocating for occupational justice through social and political means (OT 532-Management of OT Services) and advance their skills in scholarly research and writing along with more complex evidence-based practice application to case studies (OT 533-Scholarship and Evidence-Based Practice II) that are drawn directly from their fieldwork experiences (OT 522-Level IB Fieldwork).
In the fourth semester, students begin 20 weeks of full time level II fieldwork (OT 621-Level IIA & 622-Level IIB) in which they are expected to apply their knowledge, skill, and reasoning abilities in full time assignment to varied practice settings. Returning to the classroom in the 5th semester students apply reflection and advanced clinical reasoning to cases collected in fieldwork rotations and collect and appraise evidence related to those cases while examining the system factors that shape and influence practice (OT 631—Seminar IV: The Reflective Practitioner). Didactic coursework focuses on development of advanced skills with pediatric practice in preparation for the final level II fieldwork (OT 623-Level IIC) that occurs in the final ten weeks of the semester. The sixth and final semester is dedicated to helping the student develop OT programs that will address needs across a wide range of populations and systems through development of innovative (OT 633-Enacting Innovative Practice) and visionary practice (OT 635-Visionary OT Program Development) projects in hopes of inspiring the emerging practitioner to lead change in his or her future organizations and carry a spirit of service into their new careers. Students in the sixth semester will also develop an evidence-based practice project (OT 632-Evidence-Based Practice in Current Settings) requiring advanced clinical and critical reasoning. Advanced practice skill development (OT 634-Advanced Topics in OT) will promote development of additional specialty knowledge for the new graduate to take into practice.
The curriculum is further designed to fulfill the mission of the School of Occupational Therapy so that graduates, as integrated practitioners, are able to “promote health in mind, body, and spirit through the use of therapeutic activities (occupations) that enhance quality of life for individuals with whom they work, and the communities in which they live.” As School of Occupational Therapy graduates move into practice, it is expected that they will have profound effects on the occupational lives of their clients to promote satisfaction with life and enhance their social participation. These practitioners will also have significant potential to change society for the better by helping people and institutions to understand the complex interaction of occupation and health and how applying the OT process can support the achievement of occupational justice for all.
General Outcome Objectives of Curriculum
The learning process within this curriculum weaves together multiple levels of knowledge, skills and abilities which shall, upon completion of the curriculum, enable the student to:
1. Reason from a sound philosophical base, while practicing both the art and science of occupational therapy, to provide quality services in a variety of practice environments.
2. Demonstrate the use of occupation in the maintenance, restoration, and promotion of health and wellness in environments of self-care, work, education, play, leisure and social participation with individuals across the age span.
3. Demonstrate the values, personal and professional ethics, and commitment to lifelong learning that are necessary to serve society and achieve fulfillment in ever-changing environments.
4. Use professional and community leadership skills to promote the continuous evolution of quality health care within diverse social, cultural, political and institutional environments.
5. Promote understanding of the unique efficacy of occupation as a means of maintaining health in the community at large.
6. Use and contribute to the body of knowledge related to the study of human occupation and the practice of occupational therapy.