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Areas Of Knowledge And Skills Essential To Occupational Therapists In Clinical Psychiatry --A Critical Study Of 395 Performance Examples, Elizabeth A. Boles

Masters Theses

Introduction

Occupational therapy, an allied medical discipline, has experienced rapid growth in the slightly more than forty years of its existence. The impetus given to this field through the training of World War I reconstruction aides, the forerunners of professional occupational therapists, has been described by Willard and Spackman.¹ These authors state that the inauguration of the first collegiate training program took place at Milwaukee Downer College in 1913. By 1921 a national professional organization had been formed,² and by 1938 four schools of occupational therapy had been accredited, based on standards set up by the American Medical …