Geriatric Rehabilitation and Palliative Care

Enabling activity in palliative care: focus groups among occupational therapists

“…Many clients in palliative care wish to have an influence over their care [8, 9, 14–17] and to have control over their daily lives [6, 17, 18]. Earlier studies have described that this can be achieved through participation in meaningful activities [4, 6, 10, 15, 19] in which the client and the occupational therapist together plan activity-related goals [10, 15, 16, 20–22]. It is important for clients to find the motivation to be active [10] and to feel valued [6, 8].…”

“…Clients often want to maintain or improve their independence [17, 22, 23], physical function [16, 24], and activities of daily living [10, 17, 22–24] in order to live as normally as possible [3, 11, 16, 17, 22]. They want to be able to spend time with their loved ones [4, 6, 11, 16, 17, 19, 21] and possibly to be able to return home [22]. They also want meaningful activities to fill the day [6, 7, 19] and to feel hope [20].…”

“…Additionally, studies state that more practice and support needs to be available to prepare occupational therapists to work with palliative care clients [26, 27]. To summarize, existing research describes the importance of working with activities to relieve symptoms, enable social relationships, and improve the client’s self-image, self-determination, and situation [4, 6, 13, 22, 23], but this research does not make clear what those activities are or how to enable them. By describing how activities are used in palliative care by capturing the expert opinions of those already working in the area, new understanding and knowledge can be generated.…”