why is evidence based practice important in occupational therapy?

[hotpebbles]

was writing the secondary essay and wondered if anybody knows the answer.
The title "why is evidence based practice important in occupational therapy?" is not the essay topic, but related to what i'm trying to write.

It might sound a bit too obvious, but i was a bio major in undergrad & grad and "evidence based practice/research" was all i did. Therefore, I blindly thought that all of our healthcare/science areas were operated on "evidence based" practice.

However, when I saw this "evidence based" practice was 1 of 4 missions of UIC, i was a bit confused. If OT was not previously using "evidence based" practice, WHAT WERE THEY USING? clinician's judgement? instinct? trial and error????

Also, is research in OT schools different from research at bio grad?
Is it more qualitative than qualitative?


current OT's, students, or OT's to be, please help.

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[resot]

was writing the secondary essay and wondered if anybody knows the answer.
The title "why is evidence based practice important in occupational therapy?" is not the essay topic, but related to what i'm trying to write.

It might sound a bit too obvious, but i was a bio major in undergrad & grad and "evidence based practice/research" was all i did. Therefore, I blindly thought that all of our healthcare/science areas were operated on "evidence based" practice.

However, when I saw this "evidence based" practice was 1 of 4 missions of UIC, i was a bit confused. If OT was not previously using "evidence based" practice, WHAT WERE THEY USING? clinician's judgement? instinct? trial and error????

Also, is research in OT schools different from research at bio grad?
Is it more qualitative than qualitative?

I'm going to assume that you meant to write, "Is it more qualitative than quantitative?"

And unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this. From what I have observed, OTs use a combo of clinician's judgement, instinct, trial and error, and EBP. I think the problem lies in the fact that OT is not a black and white profession. As we offer therapy, we tailor our goals and treatment to meet the needs of each of our clients. This means one person's OT service is not going to be the same as another person's OT service.

As a bio undergrad major myself, I know biology leads itself more to quantitative studies. You can control the environment, have a large sample, and etc. while testing for one specific variable and its effects. In OT, this is a lot harder to do since we are dealing with people with diverse needs and diverse contexts. We can't control the experiment and variables in a way that a scientist typically can during a biology study.

As a result, you will see qualitative studies more frequently in OT. There are a few topics that are easier to conduct quantitative studies on, so you can find more quantitative studies on those topics (like CIMT).

 

[OTtoB]

Historically, there has been a divorce between research and clinical practice. While researchers studied the efficacy of specific treatment modalities, clinicians would for the most part, ignore the research and instead use anecdote and personal biases to guide clinical practice. This has in various cases, harmed rather than helped clients. If a treatment has been scientifically demonstrated to not have any benefits for a client, then it is integral for the practioner to avoid the treatment modality. Evidense based practice is basically, essential to being a competent practitioner.

If a treatment does not have a proven benefit, it is basically qauckery (e.g., Phrenology, Orgone treatment).

Qualitative versus quantitative research will probably depend on the frame of reference considered. If a biomechanical model is used, you will see quantitative methods. If a psychsocial model is used, you may see qualitative methods. This is because the contents of conscious experience are not intersubjectively observable, or easily measured using quantitative methods.

 

[c2902]

To add to what's already been said, AOTA is making a huge push toward evidence-based practice as standard of care, as part of their Centennial Vision for the profession. OT hits the "official" 100 year mark in 2017. To that end, in order to develop OT as a well-recognized and necessary profession, part of this initiative to up our science/research base, in part to prove that what we do works, and also in part to appease folks on the money end of things (to make our case to the insurance companies as to why they should cover our services). Up to now, OT research has gleaned from a lot of other disciplines, and as mentioned, a lot of the research that is OT-specific might be more qualitative than quantitative. In some regard, qualitative research gets passed off as not being as "good" as high-level quant studies, but both are equally valid to the profession in various ways. The whole point is to build not only more of those higher level quantitative studies (randomized controlled trials, etc), but to expand the OT-specific body of research in general so that we can better frame ourselves as a distinct and uniquely necessary profession.