Sarah Bream OTD, OTR/L, FAOTA (she/her/hers)

Occupational therapy literature contains little evidence of the added value of clinical doctorate education, the professional identity of a Doctor of Occupational Therapy, or distinctions between master’s-prepared and doctorate-prepared occupational therapists. This study is intended to add to the literature base through the systematic and in-depth exploration of the experiences of graduates from a post-professional clinical doctorate program in occupational therapy. The goal of this study was to examine the professional identity transformation experienced by occupational therapists completing a doctorate degree, and to better understand the Doctor of Occupational Therapy identity. The study followed a qualitative descriptive design, including participant focus group interviews and document review. Participants included sixteen recent graduates, two male and fourteen female, of a post-professional doctorate program in occupational therapy. Data analysis revealed recent graduates’ perceptions of the leadership characteristics and capacities they developed throughout their learning experiences in the program and contributing to their professional identities as Doctors of Occupational Therapy. Results may have implications for the capacity for leadership within the profession. Further study is warranted to examine the impact of occupational therapy doctoral education on professional identity and capacities.

In the professional education of mental health practitioners, including occupational therapists, there has been a lack of meaningful inclusion of people labeled with mental illness into curricula, beyond guest speaker panels and presentations. This study explored the experiences of students, faculty, and 'Experts by Experience' within a mental health occupational therapy course that incorporated Experts with lived experience as co-facilitators of weekly fieldwork debriefs. The study utilized focus groups and interviews to understand the experiences of students, mental health faculty, and 'Experts by Experience'. Key themes that emerged from the qualitative data analysis were organized under three broad categories: 1) Students experienced powerful insights, 2) Experts conveyed the complexity of the work, and 3) Faculty grew from co-creating learning experiences with the Experts. This research makes a significant contribution to occupational therapy education by shifting the Expert's role beyond traditional speaker panels or storytelling. This broader responsibility elevated experiential knowledge into the realm of practice in clinical reasoning by shifting the context of the knowledge from storytelling to support practice reasoning. While this created significant learning opportunities for the students, it also did appear to cause emotional risk for the 'Experts by Experience'. It is important that efforts to include 'Experts by Experience' in curriculum also include sources of support and financial remuneration.

The COVID-19 pandemic emerged in early 2020, as did calls to bring an occupational perspective to an evolving situation. However, the role of occupation-focused education in facilitating responses to the global crisis was missing from this dialogue. This paper aims to address that gap by describing the development of a new course delivered at the University of Southern California in 2020 and 2021. Grounded in occupational science, this special topics course aimed to meet various teaching and learning needs for the post-professional occupational therapy doctorate program. This paper describes how the focus, format, and content of the course developed through a backward design approach to address topics related to the COVID-19 pandemic and intersecting, ongoing crises of structural racism and health and social inequalities. The primary course assignment, a knowledge mobilization product, provided students novel opportunities to leverage their occupational perspectives in response to emergent issues. The paper concludes by addressing three interrelated topics: the importance of institutional mechanisms that facilitate responsive educational innovations; the need to track the teaching and learning impacts of such innovations; and how such innovations reflect the importance of occupational science education.

Keywords. Occupational science; Backward design; Knowledge mobilization; Professional education; Occupational therapy

International students who enroll in American occupational therapy academic programs must quickly adapt to the academic demands and everyday life rhythms within the United States. This qualitative study contributes to the body of knowledge of lived experiences of international occupational therapy students, specific to their transition to graduate occupational therapy education and daily life in a new country. Thirteen (13) international occupational therapy graduate students and alumni participated in an individual or joint interview. Three key themes emerged from the findings and include the following: 1) Challenges: Inside and Outside of the Classroom, 2) A Support System: A Home Away from Home, and 3) Giving Back to my Home Country: Improving Occupational Therapy Education, Practice, and Research. This study provides insights into the challenges experienced by international graduate occupational therapy students and alumni, strategies that are beneficial in supporting them as they transition into graduate level education and daily life within the United States, and their motivations for giving back to their home countries.

To more clearly understand how the profession of occupational therapy has historically defined, viewed, and interpreted clinical practice specific to adolescent mental health, the author of this article conducted an in-depth review and analysis of the topic in occupational therapy literature, including Occupational Therapy Archives (1917 to 1924), Occupational Therapy & Rehabilitation (1925 to 1950), the American Journal of Occupational Therapy (1960 to 2009); and 11 editions of Willard and Spackman’s Occupational Therapy textbooks (1947 to 2009). This article offers insight into how the profession of occupational therapy has historically conceptualized clinical practice settings, interdisciplinary collaboration, therapeutic approaches, and types of intervention specific to our role in adolescent mental health practice. The article also includes a timeline of key historical events that have helped shape occupational therapy practice in adolescent mental health.