Describing the occupational nature of practice: A scoping review

Describing how occupation is used in practice can be challenging for occupational therapists. Occupation-centred, occupation-based, and occupation-focussed terminology are frequently used interchangeably and ambiguously to describe practice. However, ambiguous language creates confusion and inadequately demonstrates the value of occupation.

This scoping review aimed to identify how occupation-centred, occupation-based, and occupation-focussed terminology are defined and represented in occupational therapy literature.

A five-step scoping review included papers published between 2014 and 2019 from four databases. Extracted data were summarised to outline how the terms were being used within the literature.

Initial searching yielded 819 articles and 35 papers met inclusion/exclusion criteria. Within current literature, occupation-focussed and occupation-based terminology were inconsistently described. A limited number of articles used occupation-centred and occupation-focussed terminology to describe practice, whilst occupation-based was more prominent. Occupation-based terminology was represented in numerous ways to describe assessments, practice tools, interventions, research, and theory. Discrepancies between the description and implementation of occupation-based practice were most prominent within interventions.

Findings demonstrated that occupation-based and occupation-focussed terminology were used interchangeably and inconsistently in literature. It is timely to consider how this is problematic for our professional identity and perceptions of occupation in practice.