Approaches to the practices of occupational therapy and its relationship with some human rights ethical principles

Abstract

This article presents the main results of a study whose objective was to analyze the relationship between Occupational Therapy practices and three of the ethical principles or values of Humans Rights: autonomy, dignity and equality, based on the experience of occupational therapists from the city of Concepción in Chile. The research methodology used is qualitative, with a dialectical hermeneutical approach. Eleven occupational therapists of both genders participated in the study. They work in the field of health, education and justice. The information was produced by semi-structured interviews to two of them, and in a discussion group in which nine occupational therapists participated. The categories were analyzed through discourse analysis. The main results indicate that the facilitators to materialize the ethical principles of human rights are in the intentionality and the incipient development of occupational awareness at the disciplinary level. The greatest difficulty is found in the material and symbolic conditions generated by the neoliberal capitalist model in institutional practices. The challenge is to promote the associativity among the actors involved in the intervention processes, as well as to promote the rescue of collective values in disciplinary practices.