Occupational therapy formation for management

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: for many years, undergraduate courses have focused on occupational therapy as clinical practitioners, but with changes in the labour market and social policies, the professional has begun to occupy different posts, including managerial ones. OBJECTIVE: to investigate the training of occupational therapists to practise in management. METHOD: this is a descriptive and cross sectional study with a sample of 278 occupational therapists from different institutions in Brazil. The method of data collection was through a questionnaire with both open and closed questions. The survey´s data was analyzed using the software IBM - Many Eyes. OUTCOMES: the importance of management study during undergraduate courses was reported by all participants. Around 86% (n=239) of participants reported diffi culties related to the management content of their undergraduate courses. CONCLUSION: it is believed that the results obtained from this research may help future proposals that address curricular content, to include management, since the participants’ responses show currently such undergraduate courses still lack content in this area.