Referral

Prioritisation

Assessment

Intervention

Evaluation

Outcomes

Reflection

The blogs are designed so each section stands alone and you can begin at the beginning, middle or at the end depending on your burning issue.

Working with people you will find that there is no one theory, practice or strategy that will help solve the all the persons issues or problems.

In this series of 7 blogs I have broken down the OT process that can be used over and over again in a micro or macro context, in any area of practice.

If you are already using an outcome measure which works just fine for you, well done you can skip this blog. If not read on…

Although you might think that measuring outcomes is the last thing you do this is often the place we need to start. It is essential that you provide tangible evidence of the difference you have made for your clients.

If you’re going to show what has changed for clients then you have to use a baseline.

Having a measure is crucial, because after the intervention you will then have two pieces of evidence. One is a score recorded at the beginning of the intervention and the second is a score recorded at the end of the intervention. The difference between these two scores is the difference your intervention has made.

Your baseline can be any standardised assessment or can be as easy as a self rating scale. Self rating is a really, really valuable tool. It gives control to your client. If you feel this is challenging for your clients, have a think around it, we are the best problem solvers.

I have created collages of what it means to be confident with my clients with learning disabilities, and then we created collages of what not being confident meant to them. I put those two images on the wall 5 steps apart and asked people in my group to rate themselves with different tasks. I took photos. At then end of our intervention I repeated the process and everyone had moved position. We all had photographic evidence of change.

Identifying outcomes is absolutely crucial to your practice, because demonstrating that you have made a difference means its worth buying occupational therapy.

Making a difference is the absolute heart of your practice- it’s why we do the job we do.

In the next blog we explore how we can reflect on our practice.

If you have any questions or comments I would love to hear from you.

Just email me on margaret@ot360.co.uk or you can visit my website www.ot360.co.uk if you would like a bit more information about me.