Date Presented 03/22/24
Embedding practice scholarship in daily work is challenging for practitioners despite being emphasized in the American Occupational Therapy Assocation’s Vision 2025 and mission statements. This presentation defines and provides strategies used by active practice scholars.
Primary Author and Speaker: Sierra Rose Smith
Additional Authors and Speakers: Adriana Macdonald
Contributing Authors: Patricia Crist, Rebekah Givens, Taylor Stringer
PURPOSE: A notable gap exists between what researchers’ study and what practitioners are seeing in their everyday practice (1). Fundamentally, practitioners are accountable for delivering evidence-based practice. Practitioners translate knowledge to fit their specific practice contexts (2,3). A practice scholar studies their site-specific outcomes.This study elucidates factors enabling practitioners successful practice scholarship engagement.
DESIGN: The researchers administered a semi-structured interview via Zoom allowing practitioners to provide details of their practice scholar role, activities and innovations. This poster publication is derived from a larger mixed methods, practice scholar study that will not be reported here.
METHOD: Fifteen occupational therapy practitioners who met the study’s operational definition of a practice scholar completed a semi-structured interview detailing their scholarship of practice pursuits. An inductive coding of the transcribed interviews generated nine key themes that were triangulated between the researchers to avoid biases.
RESULTS: Seven factors supporting sustainable, practice scholar engagement emerged: characteristics and outcomes from practice scholar activities; motivations; advantageous resources; role suggestions; benefits and rewards; risks and challenges; as well as valuable context supports.
CONCLUSION: Practice scholarship within the context of everyday practice is meaningful and rewarding.
STRATEGIES INCLUDE: Mentorship, a culture of research, and perceived value within the practice setting.
IMPACT STATEMENT: Insights gathered from self-identifying practice-scholars illuminate strategies, techniques and methods for motivated practitioners to support knowledge translation and increase outcomes from applied practice scholarship. This poster will bolster use of the dynamic AOTA Knowledge Translation Toolkit (4).
References
Hammel, J., Magasi, S., Mirza, M. P., Fischer, H., Preissner, K., Peterson, E., & Suarez-Balcazar, Y. (2015). A scholarship of practice revisited: Creating community-engaged occupational therapy practitioners, educators, and scholars. Occupational Therapy in Health Care, 29(4), 352–369. https://doi.org/10.3109/07380577.2015.1051690
Fitzgerald, B., & MacCobb, S. (2017). An occupational therapy and teaching partnership: Applying for scholarship of practice model. Occupational Therapy in Health Care, 31(3), 270–282. https://doi.org/10.1080/07380577.2017.1342888
Binienda, J., Neale, A. V., & Wallace, L. S. (2018). Future directions for practice-based research networks (PBRNs): A CERA survey. Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine: JABFM, 31(6), 917–923. https://doi.org/10.3122/jabfm.2018.06.180069
American Occupational Therapy Association. (2023). AOTA Knowledge Translation Toolkit. AOTA.
https://www.aota.org/practice/practice-essentials/evidencebased-practiceknowledge-translation/aota-knowledge-translation-toolkit
