Occupational therapy at the hospital: meaning constructions ona community of practice

Abstract

In the hospital, patients have no control over their time, possible standing near diseases that endanger life. In an action research focused to understand professional development and clinical reasoning of beginner occupational therapists, built as a Community of Practice (CoP), 18 person meetings were transcribed and submitted to thematic analysis. Results of subcategory “practice in hospital and stress to the biomedical model” shown as the tension with the biomedical model was present in constructs of the CoP, in that when occupational therapy entering the clinical world and hospital non-routine was called to offer possibilities of life, encouraging patients to place themselves differently and are able to fill the waiting time for procedures with your personal creativity, favoring that (a) the proper clinical care of the disease (b) a construction - which can be shared with others on the team - the image of a person who makes things, thinks and has a life story, that not only one taking place of the patient, (c) a better management of pain and hospital procedures; and (d) occupational therapy procedures for terminal patients. In addition, exercise to investigate the practice and to share it in a formative space, such as the CoP, favored the clinical reasoning appropriation on peculiarities of the practice of occupational therapy in the hospital setting.