Occupational therapy in Australian residential aged care facilities: A systematic mapping review

Australia's population is ageing, resulting in more older adults living in residential aged care facilities. Occupational therapy scope of practice in Australian residential aged care facilities is significantly influenced by the government funding instrument. As the current government funding instrument is administratively inefficient, insufficiently discriminates between residents' care needs and provides perverse incentives, a new funding model is set to be implemented. This creates an opportunity for a review of the current evidence base to support the lobbying of national associations to shape occupational therapy practice. The research question that guided this systematic mapping review was as follows: What is the current state of scholarship about occupational therapy in Australian residential aged care facilities?

A search of four databases (CINAHL, Medline, Embase and Scopus) was conducted and 1,617 papers were identified. All papers were screened through a two-phase process: (i) title and abstract review and (ii) full text review, using pre-determined inclusion and exclusion criteria to identify papers relevant to this review. A data extraction tool was designed in Microsoft Excel® and was used to extract data from the included papers.

Twelve Australian articles were published between 1986 and 2020, most frequently authored by an occupational therapist. Included articles were classified into four groups: articles including occupational therapists as participants, articles about occupational therapy practice, articles exploring an occupational perspective of residents and articles with limited exploration of occupational therapy.

This review identified that there is a dearth of Australian occupational therapy literature. This creates challenges for occupational therapists seeking evidence to guide their practice to optimise resident health and well-being and for national associations seeking to lobby for the profession. Consequently, there is a crucial need to develop the evidence base to support the profession within this practice setting and, ultimately, residents.