The Course of Self-Efficacy for Therapeutic Use of Self in Norwegian Occupational Therapy Students: A 10-Month Follow-Up Study.
Kathrin Schwank, Tove Carstensen, Farzaneh Yazdani and 1 others
PMID 29805333WHAT IT FOUND
After an introductory workshop on therapeutic use of self, 89 occupational therapy students' confidence in relationship skills rose at the 3-month follow-up and remained higher at the 10-month follow-up.
The rise was self-report, without a control group.
Key findings
01Students' confidence in using therapeutic modes rose from a mean of 40.5 at baseline to 44.7 at 3 months, and the later rise to 46.4 at 10 months was not statistically significant.
02Confidence in recognizing client interpersonal characteristics rose from 60.9 at baseline to 80.8 at 3 months, while the change to 84.5 at 10 months was not statistically significant.
03Confidence in managing interpersonal events rose from 65.2 at baseline to 71.1 at 3 months, then to 74.6 at 10 months, a borderline change with p = 0.06.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
Only 89 of the originally participating 111 students had valid scores at all 3 times, and they were recruited by convenience from two Norwegian undergraduate programs. The outcome was self-reported confidence, not an observed measure of therapy skill or client outcome. The study followed students after they had already attended the workshop, with no separate comparison group, so change over time cannot be separated from normal course progression or practice experiences. Baseline was 2 to 3 weeks after the workshop, so the earliest change was not captured. The authors note a possible ceiling effect, especially for students from Oslo, which may make later increases hard to detect.
Declared interests
No funding or conflict-of-interest declaration was included in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the sustained higher scores as proof that the workshop made students better therapists. The study measured students' own confidence, did not include a separate comparison group, and did not report client outcomes.