Transformative occupational therapy

BACKGROUND: Transformative learning involves critical self-reflection as the motor for transforming values, beliefs, knowledge, and feelings and discovering the new meaning of daily life following a catastrophic injury or illness. Transformation has been conceptualized in various disciplines as a transcendent experience, rebirth process, and meaning-making process and within occupational therapy as a meaning perspective process. PURPOSE: This Muriel Driver lecture explores the concept of transformation and presents the newly developed Meaning Perspectives Transformation model, constructed from research conducted with several different rehabilitation client groups. KEY ISSUES: The model is characterized by three phases: trigger, changing, and outcomes. A client's critical self-reflection acts as a catalyst for moving between the phases and is represented in the model as a moment of readiness for change leading to the development of alternative ways of performing. IMPLICATIONS: The Meaning Perspectives Transformation model provides a tool for being an effective occupational therapist, encouraging therapists to listen closely to their clients to identify their weakening and emerging meaning perspectives and enable their occupational evolution and transformation.