A course available through the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) focuses on strategic evidence-based interviewing in occupational therapy. The AOTA website states that the course outlines three fundamental types of interviews that are commonly applied in the occupational therapy practice. These include structured interviews, semi-structured interviews, and general clinical interviewing.

The “Strategic Evidence-Based Interviewing in Occupational Therapy” course is available online or in CD-ROM format.

According to the site, through evidence-based examples of the most frequently used interview-based assessments within the occupational therapy literature, the CEonCD course seeks to highlight a set of norms and communication strategies that are likely to maximize success in gathering accurate, relevant, and detailed information. By applying principles from the Intentional Relationship Model (Taylor, 2008), a case example will be used to demonstrate how the selection of certain modes of communication at vital time points can help maximize successful outcomes, particularly with difficult-to-interview clients.

The site notes that upon completion of the course, participants will have gained the ability to identify the uses and benefits of the occupational therapy interview, identify three major types of interviews used in occupational therapy and their respective applications, as well as recognize how specific interpersonal skills may be used to maximize time, efficiency, compliance, engagement, validity, and depth of response.

Additional objectives center on identifying the benefits of evidence-based interviews that are linked to conceptual practice models and delineating how to select an appropriate interview for a given client.

[Source: AOTA]