The design and development of guidelines to integrate spirituality and spiritual care into occupational therapy education using design-based research

Abstract

Spirituality and spiritual care have been gaining importance in recent years in occupational therapy education as constructs related to holistic and personcentred approaches, in order to improve occupational therapy practice. In a South African context there has been little research carried out on how to integrate spirituality and spiritual care into occupational therapy education; this area is thus poorly understood. Increasingly occupational therapy educators, students and clinicians need guidelines to assist them to integrate spirituality and spiritual care into occupational therapy education. The main research question addressed in this thesis is ''How can spirituality and spiritual care guidelines be developed in the context of occupational therapy education for the purpose of integrating spirituality and spiritual care into teaching and learning in order to improve occupational therapy practice?''