Occupational therapists ’ knowledge of pain

I am mightily bothered by health professionals’ lack of knowledge about pain. Perhaps it’s my “teacher” orientation, but it seems to me that if we work in an area, we should grab as much information about that area as possible – and pain and pain management is such an important part of practice for every health professional that I wonder why it’s so often neglected. So, to begin exploring this, I completed a search looking at occupational therapists’ knowledge of pain – and struck gold,  kinda. Angelica Reyes and Cary Brown conducted a survey of Canadian occupational therapists, to explore how well occupational therapists knew their stuff. Members of the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists were asked to participate and a total of 354 therapists (mainly from Ontario, Alberta and Nova Scotia) took part. Curious that few were from British Columbia where I know of quite a few occupational therapists working in the area, but there you have it.  Over half of the respondents had 10 years or less experience – so they were fairly recent graduates and should reflect a “current” educational bias. Only 5% of the total number of members of CAOT responded, so this is a fraction of the occupational therapists working in Canada – but you’d think the motivated (ie knowledgeable) would be more likely to respond than those who don’t work in the area…. What they found was consistent with previ...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Education Education/CME Occupational therapy Pain conditions Professional topics Research biopsychosocial Chronic pain Health pain management Source Type: blogs