MSOT Curriculum

MSOT Program Overview

Occupational therapy is one of the most in-demand professions in America according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (2017). At Cox College, students experience hands-on learning opportunities in classroom, clinical, and community settings. The MSOT program combines a strong evidence-based learning environment with application in the community.

Occupational therapy focuses on helping a person engage in everyday activities that they want and need to do (WFOT, 2012). Driving, cooking, dressing, bathing, and playing are common everyday occupations. Occupational therapists are skilled in helping a person return to meaningful activities or adapt and modify activities in order to support the highest quality of life when development or injury has negatively impacted daily life. Students who enter the field of occupational therapy often have excellent interpersonal skills and strong interests or backgrounds in psychology/ social sciences, athletic performance/ movement, anatomy, and neurosciences. In short, occupational therapists use occupation as an avenue to promote health and well-being (WFOT, 2012).

Vision

Department of Occupational Therapy at Cox College: Leaders in occupational therapy education.

Mission

The mission of the Department of Occupational Therapy at Cox College is to create scientist-practitioners who are client-centered, occupation-driven, and clinically competent. We achieve this mission by:

  1. Utilizing a multi-modal approach to curriculum delivery resulting in therapists equipped to succeed in diverse health care environments. (KNOWING)
  2. Encouraging reflective practice to advance critical thinking, clinical reasoning, and problem-solving skills. (DOING)
  3. Providing opportunities for commitment to the everyday advancement of the field of occupational therapy. (ADVANCING)
  4. Collaborating with community partners to advance the practice of occupational therapy in Southwest Missouri. (LEADING)

Philosophy

The Department of Occupational Therapy shares the philosophy of the profession in that “people of all ages and abilities require occupation to grow and thrive” (Hooper & Wood, 2014). In keeping with the Cox College mission of commitment to teaching clinical excellence, the Occupational Therapy Program views occupation, occupational performance, and occupational participation as fundamental principles for organizing the curriculum, including service-learning projects and active teaching/learning processes (learning through doing). Embedded within the curricular design is the singular principle that an individual’s occupational performance can be positively shaped by a focus on the “whole person” and attending to his/her physical, psychological, spiritual, social and cultural concerns as influenced by both internal environment (within a person) and the external environment (outside a person). Using these guiding concepts, students are encouraged to develop the capacity to examine and analyze the occupations people perform as well as enable the students to use occupation as the medium to assist people and communities to “live life to the fullest.”

Curriculum Threads & Outcomes

In the MSOT curriculum, there are common themes and threads that contribute to the overall learning experience for the student. The curriculum is designed to produce practitioners that fulfill the mission and vision of the MSOT Department. Cox College MSOT curriculum provides opportunities for:

  1. Utilizing knowledge of how the human body operates and achieves participation in meaningful everyday activities in order to understand the unique needs of individual clients. (KNOWING)
  2. Developing clinical competency and professionalism in order to deliver skilled occupational therapy services in a variety of contexts and environments. (DOING)
  3. Advancing the profession through evidence-based practice and evidence contribution. (ADVANCING)
  4. Participating in professional development, committing to professional membership, and collaborating with community partners. (LEADING)

The Cox College curriculum transforms information from the natural and basic sciences and liberal arts into an applied, holistic understanding of the art and science of occupational therapy in the learner. The curriculum reflects the person-occupation-environment interaction, the domains-processes of occupational therapy, and life span occupational performance as the central organizing concepts of the curriculum. The Person-Environment-Occupation-Performance (PEOP) model and the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework (OTPF) are the two occupational therapy theory foundations that are the backbone of the entire curriculum. They reflect the profession’s core beliefs in the relationship between occupation and health and its view of people as occupational beings.

Each course intentionally considers and applies the PEOP – OTPF model with all course content and objectives as a major unifying curriculum thread that supports the achievement of the curricular outcomes. Courses are logically sequenced to instill in students comprehensive knowledge and application of this relationship and its application to occupational therapy practice.

In addition, the Scientist-Practitioner Model is applied to the MSOT curriculum delivery. The Scientist-Practitioner Model is endorsed as a favored model for the development of professionals in behavioral health and service-delivery fields (Hoidin & Olbert-Bock, 2016). It addresses the concern that educational programs might produce “people who can talk about practice rather than people who are competent practitioners” (Borders & Bloss, 1994). This model is designed to encourage students to integrate research and practice and utilize “clinical inquiry” (Hoshmand, 1991) in their clinical work. An underlying philosophy of teaching in this manner is that an effective curriculum creates professional ‘habits’ and requires intentional placement of opportunities for students to engage in clinical inquiry.

Students first acquire knowledge regarding how the body operates (OTPF: client factors – neuromotor & sensory, biomechanical, cognitive, and psychosocial function). Coursework includes but is not limited to anatomy, physiology, kinesiology, and medical conditions. Transformation of information goes towards understanding subsystem functions and interventions that contribute to the participation and performance of occupations (OTPF: areas of occupation, performance skills, and performance patterns). Students then combine all of this information in understanding the person as an occupational being whose underlying abilities in combination with environmental constraints and supports, determine occupational performance (OTPF: context and environment plus activity demands).

The curriculum utilizes metacognitive learning theory to interweave the two major threads – the PEOP along with the Occupational Therapy Practice Framework (OTPF) in that it places/offers:

  • A graded developmental approach to acquiring the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to be a clinically competent entry-level practitioner who reflects on and engages in the scholarly application of occupational therapy and has a skill set to deliver person-centered, evidence-based occupational therapy.
  • An emphasis on occupation as the link between a person and environment and as an organizing framework for understanding the interaction of these factors on occupational performance.
  • A central focus on occupation, on humans as occupational beings, and on the complex processes by which people find meaning and health through the interactive person-environment process of ‘doing’ or engaging in occupations.
  • A comprehensive understanding of both personal factors and context or environmental influences on occupational performance and function in the areas of occupation.
  • Intentional use of metacognition strategies that foster learning in context.
  • As a result, students know themselves as learners and develop the ability to approach tasks successfully because they understand that they learn different kinds of tasks differently. This sets them up for successful problem-solving skill development in clinical practice.
  • An intentional use and application of the PEOP – OTPF relationship with all course content and objectives as the major unifying curricular thread in curriculum delivery.

The entry-level MSOT curriculum model (figure 1) illustrates didactic-to-clinical experiences designed for the Cox College occupational therapy student. The inner color-filled square shows how the PEOP & OTPF theories permeate the curriculum. The hexagons depict the curriculum sequences, with the student’s clinical competence as the central core representing the culmination of the integration of the curriculum into application. The arrow of clinical inquiry represents the influence of the scientist-practitioner training where students are consistently questioning and advancing their practice through life-long learning.

Courses within each course sequence concurrently or progressively either complement each other or provide increasingly more complex applicable information and experiences than previous courses in and out of the sequences. The knowledge and skills learned are unified by the application of PEOP – OTPF theories. For example, student learning in Development of Human Occupations is tandem with Human Conditions and Occupational Dysfunctions, enabling students to intuitively understand how factors associated with dysfunction influence occupational performance. The sequencing not only allows for ample skill and knowledge preparation, but also fosters high-level strategic learning particularly, metamemory (the intuitive knowledge of one’s memory capabilities and strategies to improve it), metacomprehension (the ability to assess one’s own skills, knowledge, learning, or depth of understanding), problem solving, critical thinking, and clinical reasoning.

In keeping with the Scientist-Practitioner Model, the MSOT curriculum seeks to provide students with ample, repeated opportunities to create habits and skills related to clinical inquiry. Love, Carr, LeBlanc, and Kisamore (2013) have suggested evidence-based teaching strategies to develop scientist-practitioners that can be adapted for use in the MSOT program. Specifically, they suggest use of the Behavioral Skills Training Model (Miltenburger, 2004) which includes instruction, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback to teach Master’s level students. This evidence-based, robust strategy for developing scientist-practitioners is utilized in the MSOT program at Cox College.

The curriculum sequences provide activities to learn:

  • The structure and function of the human body as it relates to occupations (KNOWING);
  • Theoretical and philosophical foundations of occupational therapy practice (KNOWING);
  • Expressions and use of occupations and technology for teaching and learning across the lifespan (KNOWING & DOING);
  • Identification and treatment of developmental and acquired occupational dysfunctions using occupation-based interventions (DOING);
  • Evidence basis and scholarly explorations for accountable practice (DOING & ADVANCING);
  • Repeated practice using clinical inquiry in order to create the habits of a scientist-practitioner (DOING & ADVANCING);
  • Clinical competence in all areas of practice, and beginning specialization as a reflective entry-level professional (DOING & ADVANCING);
  • Leadership and advocacy for responsible collaborative clinical practice (ADVANCING & LEADING).

References

Borders, D.L. & Bloss, K.K. (1994). Helping students apply the scientist-practitioner model: A teaching approach. Counselor Education & Supervision, 34(2).

Hoidin, S., & Olbert-Bock, S. (2016). Learning and teaching research methods in management education: Development of a curriculum to combine theory and practice—a Swiss case. International Journal of Education Management, 30(1).

Hooper, B., & Wood, W. (2014). The philosophy of occupational therapy: A framework for practice. In B.A. Boyt Schell, G. Gillen & M. Scaffa (Eds.), Willard and Spackmans’ occupational therapy (12th ed., pp. 35-46). Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Hoshmand, L.L.T. (1991). Clinical inquiry as scientific training. The Counseling Psychologist, 19,431-453.

Love, J.R., Carr, J.E., LeBlanc, L.A., & Kisamore, A.N. (2013). Training behavioral research methods to staff in an early and intensive behavioral intervention setting: A program descriptions and preliminary evaluation. Education and Treatment of Children, 36(1), 139-160.

Miltenberger, R.G. (2004). Behavior modification: Principles and procedures (3rd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

United States Department of Labor (2017). Bureau of labor statistics. Retrieved from: https://www.bls.gov/.