OT doesn't "own" occupation any more than those who are studying occupational science do. I sense on the part of the student a bit of defensiveness which comes from studying an emerging discipline that is trying to define itself as seperate from OT.
Where I am at the college of St. Catherine, where we have an OTA degree, a baccalaureate OS degree and the entry and post profesional Masters degree OT education, we have worked very hard to teach our students that it is what we do with occupation that distinguishes the OS major from the OT major. ( And we do have students who are majoring only in OS and not going on to OT school.) We are preparing the OS students to engage in scholary inquiry around occupation from a variety of different interdisciplinary perspectives, and to use their knowledge of occupation broadly in many different systems. At the same time, we are taking that knowledge a step further for our OT students and teaching them the difference between applying general concpets about occupation and using occupation as the therapeutic modality for an individual client or population receiving OT services. We make sure that both the OS and OT graduate understand where each others skills are needed, and when. They all take the same foundations courses, with content adjusted as necessary for the OS only vs. pre OT track. The bigger goals have been to a)prepare our OT grad students with a solid undergraduate understanding of occupational science as the theoretical underpinnings of OT and b) produce OS graduates who do not become OT's that can articulate the value of utilizing Occupational Therapy when appropriate. Interestingly, we have a track for degree competion for those with an associate OTA or PTA degree. The PTA student we have enrolled now has said that she has such a better understanding of OT that she now finds herself suggesting OT referrals when she might not have before. When we first proposed our OS degree, we heard from many OT's in the community that they were afraid an OS graduate would take OT jobs away. That hasn't materialized; in fact the areas that our graduates are getting jobs in are so unique that it seems that it is the people with 4 yr psych, sociology, health and human service type degrees that are the main competition. We tell our students that most of the jobs that say "4yr health or human service degree required" are a perfect fit for the OS major. In fact one of their assignments is to market themselves to a real prospective employer. In conclusion, I wrote this to illustrate that the OS OT relationship should be interwoven; that the OT practitoner of the future (at least if ed prgrams are truly complying with the new Standards) should be as grounded in occupation as the person who studies the field from the interdisciplinary perspective. The only way I see this not being an accurate assessment of the OS OT relationship is if curent practitoners, instead of embracing and immersing themsleves in occupation, continue to ignore the O part of OT and unwittingly or maybe even overtly engage in a turf battle with the OS scholars. Also, those who study OS academically, whether as OT's or others, cannot let an elitist attitude about "who really understands occupation" emerge. We are branches on the same tree and we need each other. Terrianne Jones The College of St. Catherine St. Paul, MN. *********��*********** Unsubscribe? Send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the message's *body*, put the following text: unsubscribe OTlist ** List messages are archived at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] *********��***********
