Mrs Ka Yan K Hess

Introduction: Climate change threatens the environments in which person-centred occupational therapy occurs. Environmental sustainability is directly linked with the health and wellbeing of current and future generations, presenting occupational therapists with a unique advocacy and activist role. As practitioners of the future, there is an urgent need to understand students’ attitudes, perceptions of, and self-perceived preparedness for, dealing with environmental determinants of health and intergenerational occupational and climate justice. 

Methods: A cross-sectional exploratory descriptive survey collected United Kingdom (UK) based allied health professional students' attitudes, perceptions and self-perceived preparedness for advocating for environmental sustainability in the context of person-centred care.  The survey was distributed to 48 gatekeepers in UK institutions with approved allied health professional training programmes (44 offered occupational therapy); 62 occupational therapy students responded. Descriptive and non-parametric inferential statistics were used to analyse quantitative data. Text and short answers were analysed qualitatively via inductive content analysis.

Consumer and Community Involvement: The study was co-designed and implemented with MSc (pre-registration) occupational therapy students.

Results: 94% of participants expressed concerns for climate change, with 84% feeling responsible for addressing environmental sustainability in healthcare. While 64.5% identified climate justice as a top priority, a perceived challenge emerged between person-centred care and sustainability, with only 18% of participants feeling prepared for environmental sustainability in occupational therapy practice. Participants requested education on personal and professional sustainability practices, as well as collective action. Sharing personal climate change experiences, advocating with family and friends, and facilitating connections for collective action were highlighted as potentially transformative educational tools in this area.

Conclusion: Occupational therapy curricula should address environmental sustainability through pragmatic, critical and ethical lenses to enhance students' preparedness for this advocacy and activist role. Reflection and continuous professional development for environmentally sustainable practices is recommended. 

Purpose

Female adults diagnosed with myalgia encephalomyelitis (ME) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) often are marginalised because their condition is not fully recognised by medical and health-care systems. The purpose of this small-scale study was to explore the lived experiences of adult females with ME/CFS in England in relation to contributing factors that impact their occupational participation.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative study design using semi-structured interviews was used with nine female adult participants who were selected using a purposive sampling method. A Thematic Networks tool was used to analyse data.

Findings

Four organising themes were identified: impairment-, person-, environment- and society-related factors. Two global themes, invisibility and diagnosis stigma, were identified as the overarching issues that female adults with ME/CFS face in occupational participation.

Originality/value

Many of the issues that contribute to lack of participation by this population are associated with environmental factors which are secondary to their illness.

Introduction: There remains a dearth of easily-implemented strategies for translating environmental and sustainability policy into practice within occupational therapy education. In this context, the research-implementation time lag is problematic since time is of the essence when seeking evidence-based educational strategies to address planetary health challenges. The undertaking of practical experimentation to develop strategies for policy implementation and translation is challenged by the urgency of the issues faced.

Purpose: This paper aims to contribute to conversations around translating awareness of planetary health to practical action for occupational therapy education by proposing a framework for practical ‘doing’ skills, based on conceptually sound, theoretical foundations that support likely efficacy.

Methods: Three skills are suggested as a means to close the theory-practice gap while incorporating what is known about educational processes supporting the transition from novice to expert occupational therapy practitioner. The first skill proposed is a rethinking of essential forms of clinical reasoning, with the introduction of environmental and sustainable reasoning as mandatory. Founded in an adoption of ‘two-eyed seeing’, the second skill emphasises bidirectional questioning for climate-just, person-centred care. The third skill explores interprofessional educational collaboration for environmental sustainability.

Conclusions: Acknowledging the centrality of novice practitioner as part of occupational therapy learner professional identity requires appropriate strategies for learning clinical reasoning skills related to environmental sustainability, planetary health and the potential discomfort of authentic bi-directional questioning. Implications of adopting these strategies are discussed in relation to their potential contribution to positive change for the occupational therapy profession and wider society.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate psychometric properties of the Self-Efficacy for Therapeutic Use of Self (SETUS) scales, a questionnaire based on the Intentional Relationship model, and to investigate the factor structure and internal consistency of the English version of three-part SETUS questionnaire in occupational therapy students.

Design/methodology/approach

The sample of this cross-sectional study included 155 students with age range 18–30 years, of which 95% were women. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) was performed on the questionnaire scales, including the Self-Efficacy for Therapeutic Mode Use (SETMU), Self-Efficacy for Recognizing Interpersonal Characteristics (SERIC) and Self-Efficacy for Managing Interpersonal Events (SEMIE). The internal consistencies were calculated. Pearson correlation analysis was used to evaluate the strength of correlation among the scales.

Findings

The PCA confirmed that the items of each of the three proposed scales loaded strongly on one factor (self-efficacy for three factors of therapeutic mode use, recognizing interpersonal characteristics and managing interpersonal events). The Cronbach’s alpha for the SETMU, SERIC and SEMIE was 0.85, 0.95 and 0.96, respectively. The three scales significantly inter-correlated strongly (r ranging 0.74–0.83, all p 

Originality/value

The SETUS questionnaire comprises three valid and reliable scales. It can be used by occupational therapy supervisors as a means to reflect on students’ self-efficacy in components of therapeutic use of self.