Understanding occupational therapy: nursing and physician assistant students' knowledge about occupational therapy

The purpose of this study was to discover whether nursing and physician's assistant students at a large Midwestern university get a sufficient overview in their professional curriculums about the role of occupational therapy and its implications in healthcare services. These professionals play an important role in the prescription of occupational therapy (OT). Attempts at targeting these populations for marketing the OT profession and increasing the awareness of its various roles is of critical value to the OT profession. This study involved a two part survey consisted of scaled and open-ended questions asking what the students know about OT, how they learned about the profession, and a checklist testing their actual knowledge level about occupational therapy's role in the healthcare system. Correlation between section one and section two of the survey was done to understand whether students who believe they are educated about the role of OT are in fact knowledgeable about the profession. Even though a low positive correlation was found between the physician assistant students' perceived knowledge of OT and their actual knowledge, the results were not statistically significant. It was also found that most students in both the nursing and physician's assistant curriculums responded to occupational therapy's role within a very narrow scope, consisting of mainly activities of daily living (ADLs). The authors emphasize the need for targeting other health professions for marketing OT.