Occupational Therapy Practice in Rural Nebraska: Meeting the
Health Care Needs
Shortage of health care providers in rural
areas including occupational therapists continues to challenge
the quality of life for health care recipients, health care
providers, educators, administrators, and policy makers. In
spite of many efforts, Nebraska continues to experience a severe
shortage of occupational therapists in rural areas. Occupational
therapy plays a significant role in prevention of injuries and
illness, rehabilitation, and maintenance of wellness and health
and quality of life. One way to increase the number of
occupational therapy practitioners that provide services to
rural shortage areas in Nebraska is by creating positive
experiences for occupational therapy students prior to
completion of their didactic programs.
The project aims at addressing this issue
by increasing entry level OT students’ interest and desire to
practice in rural Nebraska upon graduation. This project takes a
bottom-up approach in which efforts are centered with a
core group of six OT students at the beginning. An intervention
package that consists of multiple strategies including
pre-service training, experience of successful service
provision, web-based and other ways of reflections, discussions
and sharing will be employed to this core group of OT students.
Project impact on this core group of OT students will be
transcended to all occupational therapy students in the OT
program at Creighton through purposely structured programs and
activities.
It is hoped that the efforts of the project
will increase prospective occupational therapists’ interest in
rural practice and help alleviate the severe shortage of
occupational therapy practitioners in rural areas. In addition,
findings of this research project will add to the body of
knowledge regarding occupational therapy in rural practice and
increase our understanding of this particular phenomenon.
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