The result shows that the Lawton Instrumental Activities of Daily Living Scale - Malay Version has excellent reliability and validity for use with the Malay speaking elderly people in Malaysia. This scale could be used by professionals to assess functional ability of elderly who live independently in community.

Introduction Handwriting skills play a significant role in all stages of an individual's life. Writing interventions should be considered at a younger age to ensure proper development of writing skills. Hence, the aims of this study is to evaluate the current evidence of occupational therapy interventions in handwriting skills for 4–6 year old children. Methods Published literature was systematically searched according to PRISMA guidelines using specific key terms. Initial search identified 785 studies; however only seven met the inclusion criteria and were assessed for final review. Studies were methodologically appraised using the McMaster Critical Review Form–Quantitative Studies. Results The review found no randomised control trial study design pertaining to the reviewed area. However, it can be seen that occupational therapy interventions for writing skills in 4–6 year old children managed to increase the targeted skills. The results were similar across samples with or without disabilities. An effective integration of occupational therapy interventions into educational curriculum was found to save both time and cost. Conclusion The long‐term benefit from these interventions and the effects of these interventions on a broader spectrum of fine motor abilities need to be explored further with stronger research designs. However, the lack of studies adopting high level study designs, i.e., RCT designs means, results need to be approached with caution by occupational therapists when implementing handwriting skills intervention in practice.

Objective/BackgroundOccupational therapy that focuses on servicing clients demands motivated workers for quality service delivery. The objectives of this study were: (a) to determine the level of work motivation among occupational therapy graduates in Malaysia and (b) to determine if there is a difference in work motivation among these graduates based on work sector, job position, length of work experience, and gender.MethodsThis cross-sectional study recruited occupational therapy bachelor's degree graduates using an online survey. The Work Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation Scale (WEIMS) was used to measure level of work motivation.ResultsResponses from 82 (60.3%) graduates (male: 26.8%; female: 73.2%) were analysed. Sixty-two (75.6%) graduates worked locally and 20 (24.4%) worked in foreign countries. The average Work Self-Determination Index (W-SDI) score for WEIMS is +11.38 with 78 (95.1%) of graduates demonstrated a self-determined motivational profile and 4 (4.9%) demonstrated a nonself-determined profile. Graduates in the private sector (13.10 ± 6.47) show significantly higher W-SDI score compared to those in the public sector (9.40 ± 6.06), p = 0.01. W-SDI scores appeared higher among clinician (11.67 ± 6.40), case manager (13.33), and others (14.90 ± 8.23); and those with work experience of 5–6 years (13.11 ± 6.90) and less than one year (12.65 ± 7.12). Male (10.29 ± 6.86) and female (11.79 ± 6.39) graduates shared equally high score. There is no significant difference in W-SDI score based on job position, length of work experience, and gender.ConclusionOccupational therapy graduates have high work motivation as evident by their self-determined profile. Only work sector imposes difference in work motivation among these graduates. Copyright © 2017, Hong Kong Occupational Therapy Association. Published by Elsevier (Singapore) Pte Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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Neurophobia, defined as 'the fear of neural sciences and neurology' is reported among medical students, which threatened their performance in neurology course. This phenomenon has not been studied among rehabilitation sciences students despite the significance of neurology as an area for rehabilitation. In this study we aim to assess the perceptions of neurology course and the possibility of neurophobia existence among rehabilitation sciences students of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). We also aimed to identify learning methods which are regarded as useful among the students. A survey using self-administered questionnaires was conducted among 73 students from School of Rehabilitation Sciences of the university. Questions in the questionnaire were adapted from previous studies, in which neurophobia was indicated by poor knowledge and low confidence level in managing neurology course. Results showed that the percentage of participants who perceived having good knowledge of neurology was significantly higher than the percentage who claimed of having poor knowledge level (90.4% versus 9.6%, p < 0.01). Similarly, the percentage of participants who claimed having high confidence to handle neurology cases was higher than the percentage who expressed lack of confidence (79.2% versus 20.8%, p = 0.03). However, neurology course was perceived as difficult by majority of the participants (78.1%) when compared to other courses. Majority of the participants (97.3%) perceived clinical teaching as a useful method of learning rehabilitation science courses including neurology followed by problem-based learning (90.4%). While limited exposure to neurology cases was claimed as the main reason to why neurology is difficult. In conclusion, although neurology is perceived as a difficult course among rehabilitation sciences students, the students did not report lack of knowledge and confidence in the course. This implies that neurophobia does not exist among UKM rehabilitation students. Enhancement of learning methods may assist in reducing the level of difficulty of neurology course among the students.