‘Do not ask me to remain the same’: Foucault and the professional identities of occupational therapists

The roles and frontiers of occupational therapy practitioners in the United Kingdom are being challenged by new ways of organising and regulating the workforce. Professional ways of working are challenged as structures and systems of authority, accountability and autonomy are reviewed and revised. The intention is to create a healthy environment in which jobs, career pathways and work roles are redesigned in order to use staff skills more flexibly. Support workers are taking on tasks previously only performed by state registered occupational therapists. Professionals are delegating tasks to other disciplinary groups, working within inter‐professional teams and sharing skills so that one worker can carry out a number of interventions. These new ways of working call for a revision of what it means to be an occupational therapist, a new kind of identity, a new conception of self. Considerations of identity are important because they prompt people to act in certain ways. This article aims to ‘excavat(e) our own culture in order to open a free space for innovation and creativity’ (Foucault, 1988, p. 163), by discussing the theoretical constructs of social theorist and historian Michel Foucault as they relate to the dynamics of the professional identity of occupational therapy. It is argued that applying Foucault's ideas to the creation of a history of the present occupational therapy profession will illustrate the narrowness of the professional discourse and enable a move into a broader, interdisciplinary and critical practice.