ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog

I was wondering today how many students were paying attention to the early presidential primary activities.  During Joe Biden's kickoff presidential rally in Pittsburgh yesterday he discussed the problems with over-credentialing and how it can serve to restrict competition in the marketplace. He framed his basic presentation in context of lower wage earners and Union jobs, but does his argument apply to health care other middle income licensed occupations? "They do the same thing with occupational licenses. Why should someone who braids hair have to get 600 hours of training? It makes no sense. It's designed to keep the competition down. Look, folks, you can't just transfer your licenses across one state to another. They're making it harder and harder in a whole range of professions all to keep competition down." He also talked about reclassification into exempt categories in order to prevent paying overtime.  That made me think of all my col

It is easy for occupational therapy practitioners who have been embroiled in the intraprofessional debate about entry level credentials to lose sight of a larger perspective.  Sometimes the closer you are to a concern, the more challenging it is to understand the more broad ramifications of something that happened. The grass roots effort that pushed against a mandated escalation of the entry level degrees in the occupational therapy profession made a very broad social and cultural statement.  It was a historic example of a professional group that argued against some of its own leadership in an effort that ultimately serves the more broad public interest.  It was an amazing testimonial to the nature of occupational therapy practitioners, their common sense and pragmatism, and their interest in fairness, diversity, and inclusion on many levels.  The effort highlighted the very best of the occupational therapy profession, even if it was a contentious and at times divisive argument.

An analysis of the recent motion to update policy E.6 Entry Level Education is offered for consideration. Please refer to the following for background information: A Motion to Update Policy E.6 Entry-Level Education of Occupational Therapists and Occupational Therapy Assistants and also AOTA's claim to authority over entry level degree requirements ROADMAP FOR UNDERSTANDING THE ISSUE: To understand the problems with the wording changes you need to read and understand the first policy as it is written in the policy manual.  Then you have to read and understand the motion that was submitted to update.  Then you have to read and understand what the RA actually passed.  All of this has to be considered in context of an unknown relationship between AOTA and ACOTE.  There is no way to dive into the weeds of this issue without reading all of the materials.  There is simply no way to condense it. +++ The original policy E.6 states The motion that was submitted t