Occupational therapy students' experiences in learning occupation-centred approaches to working with children

The increasing emphasis on performance outcomes and the use of occupation-centred approaches has implications for practice education.

This study aimed to describe students' experiences of learning to use occupation-centred approaches when working with children within a university clinic.

Nine occupational therapy students and two clinical educators completed three indepth interviews at intervals across the students' fieldwork experiences. Therapy observations, review of therapy documentation, and tutorial group e-mails informed data triangulation. Thematic analysis was used to identify key themes.

Students described needing to make a theoretical shift in thinking to focus on occupational performance and identified a number of challenges relating to learning complex techniques and strategies.

Teaching methods that assist in making occupation-centred assessment and intervention techniques more explicit and learner-friendly for new users are required. These findings provide valuable new insights in guiding this process.