Learning and Development of Diagnostic Reasoning in Occupational Therapy Undergraduate Students

Table 1

Structural components of occupational therapy diagnosis [6].

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Descriptive component:

Describes the deficit in occupational status. This component reflects a problem in task performance.

For example: “unable to implement the directions on the package in order to bake a frozen potpie.”

Explanatory component:

This indicates the therapist’s hypothesis about the probable cause of the performance problems. The explanatory component is a critical feature of the occupational diagnosis because intervention strategies vary according to presumed explanatory factors.

For example: the therapist might reason that short-term memory deficit accounts for the problem in meal preparation (more than one explanation may be given for the task dysfunction).

Cues:

Identifies the cues that led the therapist to conclude that there was a functional deficit and to hypothesize about the nature of the deficit.

For example: signs and symptoms or cues gathered during a meal preparation task indicative of short-term memory deficit might include “reads oven temperature setting aloud three times, but does not locate the oven dial or set the temperature.”

Pathologic:

Identifies the pathologic agent causing the deficit. It provides intervention parameters based on the course of the pathology, prognosis, and contraindications and guidelines for occupational performance.

For example: short-term memory deficit was a consequence of depression rather than of head trauma or presenile dementia, then problem resolution would differ.

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