Development of an outcome measure for occupational therapists in mental health care settings

Please be advised that the site will be down for maintenance on Sunday, September 1, 2024, from 08:00 to 18:00, and again on Monday, September 2, 2024, from 08:00 to 09:00. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Show simple item record

dc.contributor.advisor Graham, Margot Sigrid en
dc.contributor.coadvisor De la Rey, Piet en
dc.contributor.postgraduate Casteleijn, Jacoba Magdalena Francina en
dc.date.accessioned 2013-09-07T12:44:03Z
dc.date.available 2011-05-19 en
dc.date.available 2013-09-07T12:44:03Z
dc.date.created 2011-04-15 en
dc.date.issued 2010 en
dc.date.submitted 2011-02-10 en
dc.description Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. en
dc.description.abstract It is the responsibility of professions to provide evidence of the demonstrable value and quality of service delivery. Occupational therapists in mental health care settings find it difficult to produce convincing evidence of the demonstrable value and their contribution to health care. Currently no effective outcome measure for occupational therapists in mental health practices exists for the South African context . The development of an outcomes measuring system is much needed in these crucial times of cost-cutting, rendering quality of care with the minimum resources and the quest for evidence of the effect of intervention. The purpose of this study was to fill the outcome measurement gap by developing a system that is clinically tested and user-friendly for occupational therapists in mental health care settings. Such a system had to represent the outcomes in the occupational therapy programmes, meet the needs of the therapist in terms of purpose of the tool, be easily administered and be standardised. It was also important that the outcome measure was grounded in the theoretical framework that guides intervention programmes, namely Vona du Toit’s Model of Creative Ability. This theoretical framework is widely used in South African mental health care settings and was found suitable to be transformed into a rating scale for the outcome measure. A participatory approach combined with a mixed method exploratory design, specifically the instrument development model, was selected to guide the study. The development of the outcome measure happened in three phases. Domains for the outcome measure emerged after participation from occupational therapy clinicians and mental health care users in Phase 1. The operationalisation of the domains and the development of the rating scale happened during Phase 2. The third phase was the piloting of the outcome measure to identify issues to be optimised for the final implementation of the outcome measure. Eight domains with 52 representative items emerged from Phase 1. The domains were Process skills, Communication and Interaction skills, Lifeskills, Role performance, Balanced lifestyle, Motivation, Self-esteem and Affect. Clinicians were satisfied that these domains represented the service that they deliver and compared well with the mental health care users’ need for occupational therapy. The involvement of mental health care users in confirming relevant domains for the outcome measure ensured a client-centred approach in the research process. The outcome measure, named as the Activity Participation Outcome Measure (APOM), has a unique feature of generating reports and spider graphs for every mental health care user. The APOM was piloted in three mental health care settings. In spite of good intentions from clinicians to apply the measure, it was clear that measuring outcomes is neither a priority, nor a routine task in clinical settings. The preliminary investigation into the psychometric properties yielded positive results. However, the sample sizes for the validity and reliability samples were not optimal and further data collection needs to continue for confirmation. It is recommended that investigations into the psychometric properties of the instrument continue to eventually market it as a valid and reliable outcome measure for occupational therapists in mental health care settings. en
dc.description.availability unrestricted en
dc.description.department Occupational Therapy en
dc.identifier.citation Casteleijn, JMF 2010, Development of an outcome measure for occupational therapists in mental health care settings, PhD thesis, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://hdl.handle.net/2263/28019 > en
dc.identifier.other B11/60/ag en
dc.identifier.upetdurl http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-02102011-143303/ en
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/2263/28019
dc.language.iso en
dc.publisher University of Pretoria en_ZA
dc.rights © 2010 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. en
dc.subject Outcome measure en
dc.subject Creative ability en
dc.subject Occupational therapy outcomes en
dc.subject Occupational performance outcomes en
dc.subject Outcome measurement en
dc.subject Mental health care outcomes en
dc.subject Activity participation en
dc.subject UCTD en_US
dc.title Development of an outcome measure for occupational therapists in mental health care settings en
dc.type Thesis en


Files in this item

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record