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‘ Roadmap ’ for practitioners in primary care launched
RCOT and Health Education England ( HEE ) have launched the Roadmap to practice , a new CPD resource for first contact practitioners and advanced practitioner occupational therapists in primary care .
The roadmap provides governance , assurance and safety in this new area of practice and provides a clear set of advanced practice capabilities and CPD tools to enable people to demonstrate them . They will also be of interest to students , researchers and allied health professions leads to help inform system transformation .
Genevieve Smyth , RCOT ’ s professional adviser said : ‘ The roadmap has previously been successful for AHP pilots in physiotherapy and paramedics , but is now being extended for occupational therapists in primary care , or those wanting to move into primary care , which is great news .’
The pillar-based framework is central to the roadmap , to reinforce what a first contact practitioner is and how to reach an advanced level .
It is focused specifically around the first contact practitioner model used by five allied health professions in England – physiotherapists , podiatrists , paramedics , dieticians and occupational therapists – who want or need to be recognised on the HEE directory of advancing practice .
New resources on the RCOT website include : a new Evidence Spotlight , which provides some key reading and CPD activities ; an occupational therapy role descriptor , which is tied to the capabilities in the roadmap ; and a film from RCOT 2021 Annual Conference with four clinicians talking about their roles in primary care .
Visit : www . rcot . co . uk / occupationaltherapy-primary-care and www . hee . nhs . uk / our-work / allied-healthprofessions / enable-workforce / roadmaps-practice .
In the opening editorial of the December issue , Suzanne England discusses the value of data within occupational therapy , and how the occupational therapy profession and healthcare as a whole can best collect and analyse data that will inform decision making and allowing the public to make informed decisions on the benefits of occupational therapy .
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She urges us to consider how data already being collected can contribute to the evidence base for the top 10 occupational therapy research priorities in the UK , something the journal hopes to explore in more detail in the future with an upcoming series of editorials , as improving the strength of evidence presented in occupational therapy research is at the core of BJOT ’ s strategy .
Following on from this , we include a research article from Watson et al , ‘ Identifying research priorities for occupational therapy in the UK : a James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership ’. This goes into detail regarding the methodology used to set out the top 10 research priorities – which we hope in the future will inform many of the articles being submitted to BJOT .
We present a scoping review from Kemmis et al , ‘ The impact of a power mobility device on occupational participation and quality of life for people with chronic diseases ’. The aim of the study was to explore occupational participation and quality of life for power mobility device users with chronic disease .
The studies included suggested that PMDs improve independence in occupational participation , however quality of life was often inferred without a direct outcome measure , meaning more research is needed in this area .
Norin et al , present their research article ‘ Housing adaptations and housing accessibility problems among older adults with long-standing spinal cord injury ’. They investigated housing adaptations and current accessibility problems among older adults with long-standing spinal cord injuries , finding considerable accessibility problems in the dwellings of older adults with long-standing spinal cord injuries in Sweden , indicating that long-term follow-up of the housing situation of this population is necessary .
Mills et al , in their article ‘ Impact of a sensory activity schedule intervention on cognitive strategy use in autistic students ’, conducted a pilot study to evaluate a classroombased sensory activity schedule and its impact on cognitive strategy use , showing it may enhance autistic students ’ capacity to apply cognitive strategies more effectively during performance of classroom tasks .
In ‘ Participant-perceived occupational outcomes after two years of yoga for chronic pain ’, Rose et al , investigate the perceived impact and experience of long-term involvement in community-based group yoga for people with chronic pain .
Eleven participants , who previously completed an eight-week yoga intervention and continued attending yoga at a community pain clinic for two years , participated in the study . Canadian Occupational Performance Measure scores significantly improved
between baseline and follow-up , indicating that occupational therapists may consider yoga as a tool to promote occupational gains in people with chronic pain .
Finally , Shahbazi et al , translated and cross-culturally adapted the original Sensory Profile 2 questionnaires to Persian and assessed the psychometric properties of the adapted questionnaires . The study included 1,272 children in Tehran , between 0 and 14 years old , without any disabilities . They show that he Sensory Profile 2-Persian version can considered as a valid and reliable tool for utilization in Persian-speaking children between 0 and 14 years old .
10 OTnews December 2021