Model (conceptual)

The Occupational Functioning Model (OFM) is a framework used in occupational therapy to guide assessment and intervention for individuals with physical dysfunction. It emphasizes the development of competence and satisfaction in the performance of tasks associated with valued life roles to support a sense of efficacy and control over one’s life. The model organizes functioning hierarchically, from roles, tasks, and activities to abilities, developed capacities, first-level capacities, and the underlying organic substrate.

The Burn In Model is an emerging, evidence-informed occupational therapy model that offers a conceptual lens and shared language for understanding burnout and its opposite — Burn In. While developed to understand burnout, the model applies more broadly to how individuals, teams, organizations and communities explore alignment in how they live, work, and connect. 

The model explains the ever-changing state of therapeutic interactions along a continuum between a discrete model and occupation-based practice. Occupation-based practice is defined as the use of occupation in assessment and therapeutic intervention approach working toward occupational outcomes. In contrast, discrete models are measurement and intervention approaches that follow an agenda other than health through occupation and could be recognized as a medical, educational, psychological perspectives.

The Canadian Model of Occupational Participation (CanMOP) is described as an iteration of the Canadian occupation model, which assists occupational therapists to collaboratively reflect on occupational participation. Defined as having access to, initiating, and sustaining valued occupations within meaningful relationships and contexts, occupational participation is placed as a central focus in the CanMOP, guiding therapists look beyond occupational performance and engagement.

Theories, models, and frameworks provide the foundation for occupational therapy education, research, and clinical practice. While most have a systems approach focus, other factors, such as societal influences and structural inequities, also contribute to health. Using a cross-sectional design, this study identified the gaps in occupational therapy models of practice and presents a novel approach, the PAIRE (Recognize Privilege, Acknowledge Injustice, and Reframe Perspective to Reach Equity) Model.

This model consists of three dynamic interacting dimensions: exacting (experiences of everyday occupation exceeding one’s actual skills), flowing (experiences with a reasonable match between skills and challenges), and calming (experiences of low challenge, relaxation, boredom, or apathy. These dimensions have different relationship with one another. All of them and their relationships are important to achieve balance in occupational life, and to promote health and well-being.

This model of the PECO focuses on how children develop their occupations. It describes the process stages in which children go through as they initiate new occupations and continue cease or transfer current ones. Each stage is represented in rectangles. Within the pathway, the arrows indicate the direction of the process, which can go either way depending on children’s behaviors. The pathway starts from exposure and innate drive, then no initiation/initiation, to cessation/continuation, eventually ends with re-initiation/ transformation.

This model presents a hierarchy of family-therapist involvement in occupational therapy services, with associated attitudes, specific knowledge, and skills that enable therapists to operate at each level. 

The first level, no family involvement, outlines the traditional medical model of intervention. This level focuses on technical skills which are expected of entry-level therapists, with no awareness of the role of the family and client’s social context. It provides the basis for alternative types of family involvement. 

This model suggests that occupational therapists working with older adults with low vision should extend beyond compensatory techniques (e.g., modifying physical environmental and providing technology) to the community for social integration. Occupational therapists can accompany clients to nearby grocery stores, places of worship and community centers. Occupational therapists can also make recommendation to owners to eliminate environmental barriers and encourage clients to self-advocate.

This model aims to conceptualize children’s underlying skills and behavioral elements characteristic of play, as well as the influences that both individual and environmental factors. Embedded in the play environment and cultural and familial milieu, this model includes developmental play capacities (cognitive, physical and social play skills) and individual play style (internal control, freedom to suspend reality and intrinsic motivation) that make up the child’s contribution to the play transaction. Play reflects the child’s cognitive, motor, language and social skills.