Preparing General Practice Occupational Therapist to Address Transportation and Driving Grant uri icon

abstract

  • The goal of this project will be to build an educational unit to distribute and/or present to occupational therapists working in settings with client populations of older adults. This educational unit would use a newly developed framework (Dickerson, 2008) to educate general practice occupational therapists to rely on their already developed skills and knowledge to address driving with their clients. Using the results of the AMPS research study, the educational unit would demonstrate how general practice occupational therapists should employ their skills and knowledge to make appropriate recommendations. The student(s) completing this process would 1) use focus groups of general practice occupational therapists to ascertain the barriers to addressing driving with their clients as well as investigate the best methods for delivering continuing education information to practicing therapists, 2) using the developed framework and results from the focus groups, develop a draft of an educational unit that would address the driving and transportation needs with older adults, and 3) pilot the educational draft with local occupational therapists and make appropriate revisions. Using the ECU?s fieldwork supervisor?s list of practicing occupational therapists in North Carolina, focus group members would be recruited in 3-4 of the major cities across the state, covering the eastern, triangle area, western, and piedmont areas. The student(s) would prepare questions and use equipment available in the Occupational Therapy Department to record the interviews. Barriers would be summarized. If there were barriers mentioned that might be unanticipated, the students would research possible solutions and use experts in the research area to consider how to address the issues. As one of the experts, Dr. Dickerson, also has access to other occupational therapists and specialists who would be helpful in this process (see letter of support). The framework would be the basis of the educational unit and student(s) would expand on each of the steps of the model to develop a power point or other type of presentation based on the feedback.

date/time interval

  • March 2009 - July 2009