Understanding occupation in Canada: Recent graduates’ perspectives

Abstract

Background

A robust occupational perspective can fortify an occupational therapist’s professional identity, which is especially important as occupational therapists can struggle with professional identity. Occupational therapy curricula are critical to the development of an occupational perspective. Recent graduates can offer valuable insights on an occupational perspective, having transitioned from occupation-centred curricula into often medicalised practice settings.

Aims

This study explored how recent graduates from Canadian entry-level occupational therapy master’s programs understand the concept of occupation.

Materials and Methods

Using an interpretive descriptive approach, rooted in constructivism, 13 English-speaking graduates (2017, 2018, 2019) from Canadian entry-level occupational therapy master’s programs were purposively recruited to participate in semi-structured interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse data, informed by reflexivity and member-checking.

Results

Four themes were described: (1) occupation: more than doing, (2) occupation is broad, abstract, and context-dependent, (3) occupation is not well understood: the fall out, and (4) navigating the challenge of describing occupation.

Conclusion

Participants’ experiences aligned with much of the previous literature, including the challenges of describing occupation and frustrations with navigating this in practice. Yet, participants described how flexible and critical understandings of occupation facilitate the use of an occupational perspective across practice settings, supporting professional resilience.

Keywords:

• Curricula
• occupational therapy
• professional identity
• occupational perspective

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgements

The research team thanks the participants for their contributions to this study and the reviewers for their valuable feedback. No funding was received for this study. The authors acknowledge the ancestral, unceded lands of the Musqueam First Nation upon which this work took place.

Disclosure statement

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