2012 Spelbring Endowed Lecturer
Anne Fisher, Sc.D., OTR, FAOTA
Realizing Lyla Spelbring’s Legacy: Being Occupation-Centered - Implementing Occupation-Based and Occupation-Focused Services
Since the beginning of our profession, engagement in occupation has been valued as our primary therapeutic agent as well as the goal of intervention. While there are few today who would not support this idea, we continue to struggle with implementing our beliefs through “what we do” and “how we do it”. Contributing to this problem is our failure to use terminology in a manner that clearly defines what and how we do what we do in occupational therapy research, education, and practice.
In this lecture, I will first discuss some key occupational therapy terms and propose that they represent an occupation-related taxonomy that we can use to more clearly define and describe for ourselves and others what we do and how we do it as occupational therapists. Then, with a goal of fostering critical self-reflection, I will go through the stages of the occupational therapy process outlined in the Occupational Therapy Intervention Process Model (OTIPM) and demonstrate how a more precise use of this occupation related taxonomy can facilitate maximizing the power of occupation in practice.
