Focusing on occupation in assessment and intervention

Abstract

Occupation is the core of our profession. The focus of our assessments and our interventions, therefore, must be the ability of our clients to perform the meaningful occupations that our clients need and want to perform. This also demands that our assessments and interventions follow a top-down progression rather than the bottom-up approach that has predominated our field over the past several decades. Finally, assessment must be client-centered and involve the observation of occupational performance within natural contexts, and the outcome of the assessment must be the definition of the client’s problems described in terms of occupation rather than discrete functions or impairments. The Assessment of Motor and Process Skills, a standardized assessment of occupational performance that retains the focus on occupation, offers the occupational therapist a method to implement top-down, client-centered, contextual evaluation of the efficiency, safety, and independence of the client's occupational performance.