Occupational therapists, like other health care professionals, must balance their application of treatment techniques with an understanding of their patients' life experiences. This paper reviews the literature from interpretive and medical sociology regarding the interplay between professional power and the achievement of an understanding of another person. It analyzes how an occupational therapist, during a single treatment session, enters into her patient's life-world and simultaneously controls and manages the treatment process. The concepts of knowledge schemata (the expectations and beliefs people bring to a situation) and footings (the shifts in alignment, or focus, that occur during interaction) are central to this analysis. The process of achieving a balance between professional power and an understanding of the patient's experience may be fostered in education and in clinical supervision through increased emphasis on the importance of understanding the values and beliefs of patients and on the development and refinement of interactive skills.

The therapeutic relationship is not a one-way flow from therapist to patient but a mutual exchange between equals. However, it is the therapist who is responsible for establishing the environment for the therapeutic relationship to develop and flourish.

The capacity of practitioners to attend to their patients has an impact on patient satisfaction and recovery. Implications for Rehabilitation Attention is the precursor to establishing positive therapeutic alliances with patients. It is essential to attend to the patient as a person with unique experiences, perspectives, and attitudes and to modify treatment based on the person's priorities and desires. Practitioners need to develop the interaction skills necessary to understand their patients as unique individuals.

This article focuses on the role of stories told about a patient in geropsychiatric team meetings in the construction of an image of the patient. Using the narrative techniques described by Gee, Labov, and Riessman, three team meeting discussions about a geropsychiatric patient are analyzed. The role of stories and the various images these engender are examined in relationship to (a) the team's evolving understanding of the patient, (b) the team's conception of the role of the patient, and (c) how the thematic components of these stories may influence patient care.

Rapid expansion in the number and size of occupational therapy academic programs has resulted in a crucial need for faculty recruitment and retention. To encourage occupational therapy practitioners to consider academia as a career option, and to support those who choose this option, this article reviews higher education literature related to socialization into academia, the different types of academic institutions, the tenure system, and the process of entering into and sustaining an academic career. This literature is then correlated with issues in occupational therapy education. The article closes with specific literature-based suggestions for creating and sustaining an academic career through development of teaching skills, research agendas, and support systems.