Objective evaluation of clinical competence is always a difficult task. Many attempts have been made to design an instrument for such evaluation. and Performance Evaluation of Occupational Therapy Students (PEOTS) is such an instrument. It was designed as a criterion-referenced evaluation of performance in four broad areas of clinical competence: professional interaction, assessment, programming and treatment. This instrument has enjoyed fairly broad acceptance based on its face validity alone. The purpose of this study was to collect preliminary data on the content and construct validity of the instrument. A sample of 43 new graduates from Canadian occupational therapy programs were evaluated on the job within the first year of their practice using PEOTS. The data were collected over a two year period and came from facilities across the country. Analysis of the results showed that the instrument had overall good content and construct validity. However, some low frequency items need to be investigated further and some items need to have their criterion levels changed.

This article presents the historical development of a field placement evaluation manual based on the CAOT “Skills Profile”. The manual items are given and the scoring system described. Implications for students, clinicians, education programs and the CAOT are presented, should the manual be used generally in Canada.

The Canadian Journal of Occupational therapy (CJOT) is the only Canadian refereed professional publication reflecting the views and professional development of occupational therapists in Canada. A study of all issues of CJOT published during three five-year periods was carried out to see if CJOT could be said to be improving in terms of reflecting professional trends. Some areas examined were quantity of articles, type of articles, references, authors and citations. It was found that although CJOT did reflect professional growth in many areas, there were a number of areas needing improvement before CJOT could be considered to be the primary professional publication for occupational therapists in Canada.

The objectives of this study were: 1) to examine each of the 219 functions on the Occupational Therapy-Occupational Profile in an attempt to identify the functions that were domain-specific to physical dysfunction (PD) and mental health (MH) practice; 2) to demonstrate that occupational therapy practice is generic in nature if more than 25% of all occupational profile functions were not domain-specific; 3) to identify functions carried out by at least 75% of all therapists as core (essential) functions, and 4) to relate the findings to the expressed shortage of fieldwork placements, particularly in the mental health domain. Chi Square analyses were used to examine the data from the evaluations of 100 therapists (76 PD and 24 MH) and 93 therapists (75 PD and 18 MH) on 122 functions and 97 functions respectively of the occupational profile. Findings with this sample suggest that: 1) 8 functions (3.7%) were domain-specific to MH practice and 18 functions (8%) were domain-specific to PD practice; 2) occupational therapy practice could be defined as generic in nature, and 3) of the 219 functions, 112 (51%) could be identified as core functions.

The importance of the review of literature, a component of any research study, has been relatively downgraded by occupational therapists because it is time-consuming. In order to encourage novice researchers and illustrate the importance of a comprehensive review of related literature, a review was carried out in the area of auditory feedback and the teaching of the use of myo-electrically controlled prostheses. This illustration of method in research includes initial ideas, assumptions and facts, the researchable question, the literature review and the conclusions drawn from the review which help guide the researcher in his potential study.