Award Date

May 2023

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Occupational Therapy Doctorate

Department

Brain Health

First Committee Member

Donnamarie Krause

Second Committee Member

Jefferson Kinney

Number of Pages

150

Abstract

Advocating at the systems level to influence legislation and regulation can protect, promote, and progress the occupational therapy profession. This quality improvement project aimed to create and evaluate an advocacy toolkit for professional students in Nevada. The toolkit was developed under the guidance of a team of advocacy experts and leaders. Twenty-five students were recruited through convenience sampling to evaluate the toolkit. Data was collected through a one-group pretest-posttest qualitative improvement design to capture changes in awareness of Nevada-specific regulatory and legislative information, attitudes toward advocacy efforts, and the toolkit’s usability. Comparisons between the pre- and post-toolkit surveys were analyzed using the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test and content analysis. Following the toolkit review, participants demonstrated increased knowledge and confidence. Students rated the likelihood of engaging in advocacy efforts higher and found the toolkit useful and user-friendly. The project’s main limitations included using a non-standardized survey and a small sample size. Nevada occupational therapy students can benefit from an advocacy resource that can support client needs and promote services at the systems level.

Keywords

Advocacy; Advocacy toolkit; Nevada; Occupational therapy students; Systems level

Disciplines

Occupational Therapy

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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