Alonzo, Nicole and Angeles, Chrystine and Saberi, Nikki and Vandeweg, Haley (2023) Career journeys of autistic occupational therapy students and new practitioners in the United States. Masters thesis, Stanbridge University.
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Abstract
Holistic admissions is an emerging trend in occupational therapy (OT) and occupational therapy assistant (OTA) programs in the United States that focuses on recruiting candidates from diverse backgrounds to enter the OT profession (Brotherton et al., 2021). The purpose of this study is to inform OT and OTA educators and employers on how to identify solutions and better accommodate for autistic OT students’ and new practitioners’ during their journeys, in order to be successful in the classroom and their clinical practice. More research is needed on autistic OT students’ and new practitioners’ lived experiences, and we hope with our study will help contribute to the research needed in this area. This research will provide insight on how to make AOTA’s Vision 2025 more effective. Our inclusion criteria consisted of current autistic OT and OTA students and new practitioners with less than five years of clinical experience. We also accepted co-occurring conditions with an initial autism diagnosis. This qualitative study utilized a one-on-one, semi-structured interview over Zoom with participants conducted by a student researcher. The findings showed that five out of the eight participants stated they did not have a sense of belonging in the profession after disclosing their diagnosis with their peers. In addition, five out of eight participants shared they were not provided accommodations as needed. We concluded that while many OT graduate programs have adopted holistic admissions as an attempt to increase diversity and inclusivity of OT, however, our findings indicated that improvements are required to better support autistic OT students and new practitioners.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | MSOTRS001 |
| Subjects: | R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry R Medicine > RM Therapeutics. Pharmacology |
| Depositing User: | Kareena Yashko |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Jul 2024 16:20 |
| Last Modified: | 23 Jul 2024 16:20 |
| URI: | http://repository.stanbridge.edu/id/eprint/158 |
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