An occupational therapy based health promotion intervention for supermarket workers as example of an innovative teaching concept for occupational therapy in health promotion

Background: Health promotion is an emerging and promising field in occupational therapy (Holmberg and Ringsberg, 2014). Although occupational therapists believe in a health promoting effect of occupations, occupational therapy... [ view full abstract ]

Background: Health promotion is an emerging and promising field in occupational therapy (Holmberg and Ringsberg, 2014). Although occupational therapists believe in a health promoting effect of occupations, occupational therapy in health promotion is rather new. Thus, a facilitation of health promotion skills in occupational therapy students and thereby an increase of future occupational therapy based health promotion interventions (OTHP-I) are needed. The teaching concept will be described with an example of OTHP-I in supermarket workers.
Educational theory and approach: An innovative, occupation-, evidence- and research-based approach with involvement of teacher and students’ performance was used as preparation for students’ internships. Based on systematic literature searches students determined i) potential health promotion needs of supermarket workers, ii) OTHP-Is (Mccauley, 1990, Wang et al., 2012) and iii) measurements to evaluate these interventions, and developed an OTHP-I. Within one session, the lecturer gave an introduction to the health and health risks of supermarket workers, and the students presented the rationales for the respective OTHP-I, the selection of the measurements and implemented the intervention with the use of different media embedded in an exemplary pre- and post-evaluation.
Evaluation: Students were quite challenged by this lecture but very excited about it. They were happy about a successful use of their scientific and health promotion skills. Furthermore, the implementation of the intervention with their colleagues was fun.
Application to Education and practice: The acquired knowledge and skills could be used in their internship based on the detailed information of each OTHP-I provided by the students.