Opportunities for Occupational Therapy on a Primary Care Team

IMPORTANCE: Leaders in the occupational therapy profession have called for occupational therapy's inclusion in primary care, but little is known about the occupational needs of patients in this setting. OBJECTIVE: To explore the need for and potential role of occupational therapy in a team-based primary care clinic. DESIGN: A qualitative descriptive study using a convenience sample of clinicians and patients. Meetings and semistructured interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded by multiple coders using a general immersion-crystallization approach to identify relevant themes. SETTING: Outpatient complex care clinic of an urban academic medical center. PARTICIPANTS: The study included a voluntary sample of clinicians and patients from the complex care clinic. Patients were recruited from a staff-provided list; eligible patients had attended the clinic for at least 1 yr. All patients had multiple chronic conditions and were uninsured or received Medicaid. RESULTS: Researchers attended 10 clinician team meetings and conducted 13 patient interviews and 10 clinician interviews. Four domains of patient need were identified by both patients and clinicians: complex medical management, patients' limited resources, mental health needs, and challenges to occupation. Clinicians also identified cognitive-behavioral challenges affecting care, including lack of engagement and poor problem solving. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: The makeup of the clinic team reflected their intent to address medical, socioeconomic, and mental health domains. However, cognitive-behavioral challenges and patients' occupational limitations were not consistently addressed. Thus, patients had unmet needs that occupational therapy practitioners were qualified to address. WHAT THIS ARTICLE ADDS: This study adds to the available literature examining patient needs and clinician challenges in a primary care clinic. Patients have occupational needs that are not being addressed in primary care, indicating a need for occupational therapy in this setting.