Moving from theory to practice in occupational therapy education for planetary health: A theoretical view

Hello all

Happy to share a recently published article that look at new clinical reasoning (professional reasoning) that can specifically target environmental sustainable healthcare provision. The two reasoning are as below:

Environmental reasoning (novice): a foundational form of reasoning whereby the therapist assesses the environmental cost of a proposed intervention or therapeutic action; when applying environmental reasoning, the therapists explicitly considers the impacts of all forms of resources required from the perspective of the potential carbon footprint (reduce/reuse/recycle level).

Sustainable reasoning (expert): an advanced form of reasoning whereby the therapist assesses the cost of the intervention or therapeutic action being proposed from three discrete perspectives (environmental, social and financial), and consolidates costs along the triple bottom line. The social perspective is articulated using the 3Fs (Obeng-Odoom, 2020). This type of clinical reasoning necessitates the integration of ethical and pragmatic reasoning in that the therapeutic benefits to the individual are explicitly considered alongside environmental impacts and climate justice. Application of sustainable reasoning prompts the practitioner to seek solutions that consider societal- and global-level human health and environmental sustainability. [sustainable = environmental combined with pragmatic and ethical reasoning].

While this originate in occupational therapy education and practice, it can have potential application across healthcare for all practitioners making decisions in their services. To see full tex of the article: https://doi.org/10.1111/1440-1630.12868 

Enjoy!

Ka Yan