This study demonstrated that occupational therapy students can be reliable raters after being trained and tested for competency. To improve psychometric properties for instruments commonly used in the profession, students can participate in collecting normative data for hand-held dynamometry.

Background: Occupational therapy ethics require that therapists use current assessment tools that provide useful comparison data. When an assessment only has normative data that is more than 40 years old, it cannot be considered current. The purpose of this study was to examine the past and current use of the Purdue Pegboard Test by occupational therapists and other professionals and to determine if it is beneficial to conduct a large normative study on the Purdue Pegboard Assembly Task (PPAT) in order to bring the test up to date.

A systematic review of the literature between 2003 and 2007 was conducted to explore the questions 1) Are school-aged children actually at risk for back pain because of carrying backpacks? How much of a load is too much? 2) Does backpack in adolescence predict back pain in adulthood? 3) Are there behaviors that lessen/increase the risk of back pain/injury? i.e. education on how to carry, pack the pack and psychosomatic behaviors? Method: Cochrane Collection, Pub-Med, OTSeeker, PEDro, FirstSearch Medline, ERIC, General Engineering, Engineering Village2 and Goggle Scholar were searched with the following keywords in various combinations: backpack, back pain, load, children, adolescents, pediatrics, and physical fitness. Sixty-three articles were considered for the study to answer the three research questions. Each study was analyzed for specific application to the three questions. Results: Ten articles were analyzed for the first, epidemiological question, two articles were analyzed for the second long term health risk question and seven articles were analyzed for the behavioral question. Conclusion: Weight recommendations and carrying behaviors are not consistently supported in the recent studies; several studies call for an examination of psychosomatic behaviors as potential predictors of back pain in childhood and adolescence.

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BACKGROUND: Physiotherapy and occupational therapy professionals are at high risk of developing occupational musculoskeletal injuries globally. Musculoskeletal pain is the most common problem. OBJECTIVE: To determine the extent of discomfort that physiotherapy and occupational therapy health professionals report while working at a physical rehabilitation centre. PARTICIPANTS: Physiotherapy and occupational therapy professionals which include both graduate and diploma physiotherapists and occupational therapists as well as physiotherapy and occupational therapy assistants. METHODS: A self administered questionnaire (survey) was conducted on a convenient sample of 101 physiotherapy and occupational therapy personnel. RESULTS: The mean age of the 101 participants was 27.8 (± 4.5) years and most of the participants (62%) had less than 5 years of work experience. Ninety-five percent of the participants complained of work related pain. Most of the participants reported pain in the lower back (n = 84) followed by upper back (n = 71) and neck (n = 66). Significant associations were found for pain in ankles/feet with age (p = 0.05) and pain in neck with gender (p = 0.01). CONCLUSION: Physiotherapy and occupational therapy professionals suffer from pain in relation to the work they do as therapists which may be due to non-practice of appropriate body mechanics. Mechanism to assess level of practice during dealing with patients may be introduced to enable corrective measures. Incentives should be considered for appropriate practice.