AOTA

Description: 

Every day, in clinics and hospitals around the world, occupational therapy

Practitioners care for patients with serious problems requiring viable solutions. Each patient is unique, and his or her problem does not necessarily correspond to existing practice models. In such circumstances, practitioners must adapt standard approaches to provide effective outcomes. Yet, daily, there are problems for which very few or no beneficial approach has been identified. These clinical issues require solutions to be generated de novo from the practitioner’s body of knowledge and past experience. For many of these challenges, the occupational therapist with a prepared mind is the one willing to seize an unexpected opportunity and construct new paradigms of practice. Yet, no single new intervention can be employed without prior validation of its efficacy. That is the purpose of conducting formal research, to prove the worth of new approaches and solutions for clinical challenges. Only a therapist with a prepared mind can accept such challenges, recognize what is known and not yet known, design studies to acquire that needed knowledge, and translate it into successful clinical treatment strategies. Innovation through scientific inquiry requires a prepared mind.