Proposing a Metacurriculum for Occupational Therapy Education in 2025 and Beyond

Abstract

The American healthcare system has undergone significant changes in the past few years due to government and corporate-level changes. As healthcare requirements continue to shift, occupational therapists must continue to assert their role or risk losing relevancy. Therefore, educational programs must prepare students to meet the populations’ shifting healthcare needs through agile curricula which focus less on isolated skills and more on broad areas of impact. To determine essential content comprising a ‘metacurriculum’ for occupational therapy education of the future, nine articles were analyzed using Bloom’s Taxonomy (revised) to code each document into knowledge, skills, and behaviors. Major themes were identified across all documents. Through the coding analysis eleven themes were identified: population health, developing life-long learners, advocacy (at government and individual level), interprofessional collaboration, generation of evidence and translational science, diversity and inclusion, psychosocial concerns, aging, wellbeing and preventative care, contemporary issues and informatics. The themes can serve as an outline for academic programs to continue to evolve their curricula to ensure that practitioners are fully prepared to address the global issues that will manifest during their careers in occupational therapy.