The power of observation. Occupational therapists’ descriptions of doing observations of people with cognitive impairments in the context of community practice

Abstract

Background

Observation is an important method for occupational therapists (OTs) to gather information on people’s occupational performance; yet, not much research has been conducted on OTs’ descriptions of doing observations in their practices.

Aims

This study aimed to explore community OTs descriptions of doing observations during the assessment of persons with cognitive impairments.

Material and Methods

Nineteen OTs participated in focus group interviews. Thematic analysis with an inductive approach was performed.

Results

Three themes were revealed during analysis, the value of doing unstructured observations, the importance of doing observations in familiar contexts, and the importance of experience, structure and competence when doing observation.

Conclusions and Significance

This study showed that the participants regarded observation as one of OTs’ core competencies, and they described doing observations in different ways. The results emphasised the importance of doing unstructured observations in persons’ familiar contexts when assessing persons with cognitive impairments. However, the participants highlighted the need for increasing OTs structure and competence through implementing more occupation-based standardised assessment tools for OTs in community services to facilitate evidence-based practice.

Keywords:

• Assessment
• cognition
• community practice
• observation
• occupational therapy

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the valuable contribution of all the OTs who participated in this study. Thank you for sharing your time and experiences with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).