Professional resources
Digital health literacy study
Guanqun Li , Rachel Chan and Kate Hayden are three MSc Occupational Therapy students from the University of Southampton wishing to recruit Health and Care Professions Council-registered OTs currently working in the UK , to explore the digital health literacy among occupational therapists and their perceptions of digital technology in occupational therapy practice .
The study has two phases ; an online anonymous survey and an interview . Participants can opt to do one phase or both phases .
The survey takes up to 15 minutes to complete and you can ask for more information about the interview at the end of the survey .
The interviews will be conducted online via teams and will take up to one hour .
To find out more information regarding the interviews and access the survey , please visit https :// bit . ly / 3Uo7GNN . For more information , please contact rhtc1d22 @ soton . ac . uk or keh1d22 @ soton . ac . uk or gl1d22 @ soton . ac . uk .
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The need for a co-produced , occupational therapy PREM
There is a consensus among health and care providers that public and service user involvement in the design of services is best practice ., as evidenced in RCOT ’ s statement of intent to make co-production part of decision-making . See www . rcot . co . uk / public-contributors . The NHS in Wales is committed to providing prudent and sustainable value-based services . The Welsh Government ’ s Health and Social Care Strategy 2019 , stipulates a service users ’ role as not only voicing their experiences and being involved in their own care , but working as equal partners with providers to co-develop and co-produce care services . See www . gov . wales / health-social-carestrategy .
There is evidence to demonstrate that working in this way enables OTs to be better at empowering individuals to advocate for themselves . It also improves therapeutic relationships , but primarily , co-producing services leads to better outcomes for people .
At Cardiff and Vale University Health Board , we are scoping the potential development of an occupation focused Person Reported Experience Measure ( PREM ). We want to test our clinical reasoning to assure the impact of what we are doing is of value to the people we are working for .
At local level , the OT team within our Community Mental Health Service collects outcomes via our assessment and review process , using standardised tools from MOHO and Allen ’ s Model of Cognitive Disability .
Some of these , such as the Occupational Self- Assessment , is completed by an individual , before and after treatment , which serves as a Person Reported Outcome Measure ( PROM ).
While clinical outcomes can be captured by PROMs and clinical observations , information about people ’ s experience is subjective in nature and can only be effectively voiced by themselves ( and their carers or supporters ).
Therefore , designing an instrument to ask the right occupation-focused questions , to evaluate our clinical reasoning , can only be achieved in partnership with those using OT services .
Cardiff and Vale ’ s OT services are currently codesigning a PREM to evaluate OT with individuals using our services .
There are examples where occupational therapists have developed PREMs themselves . We would be keen to collaborate and learn from the great work already done . If you have developed , or are developing , an occupation focused PREM we would be grateful if you could contact Emma Clinker at emma . clinker2 @ wales . nhs . uk .
38 OTnew May 2024