Strategic direction 1: Strengthening occupational therapy workforce data

Knowing the status of the occupational therapy workforce is required to identify needs and monitor workforce development over time. This knowledge depends on data regarding the occupational therapy workforce. The systematic collection, integration and reporting of workforce data is necessary for the information to be valid, comparable, useful and utilised for strengthening activities. However, despite this need, detailed, current and accessible occupational therapy workforce data worldwide is not available at this time.

Identified weaknesses ^{9 14-17 23}

• Occupational therapy workforce data that is hard to navigate or integrate, and scattered across data sources (e.g., registration/licensure bodies, immigration agencies, or census organisations). Employment data can come from sector databases with varying structures and timelines (for example, from private, public, or non-governmental organisations).
• Gaps exist in the data about employment, attrition rates, turnover or mobility of occupational therapists. Such gaps impede the assessment of the workforce currently working as occupational therapists versus those who are eligible for practice).
• Occupational therapy workforce data in census or administrative databases often is not profession-specific but instead aggregated with ‘other’ professions; this partly arises from the lack of a profession-specific category for occupational therapists within the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO).
• Occupational therapy workforce data often does not disaggregate the distribution of the workforce per practice sectors or geographic areas and is thereby not able to detect distribution disparities.
• Professional registration / licensing bodies can provide reliable, integrated data on the entire occupational therapy workforce; yet, registration / regulation does not exist in all jurisdictions, particularly in many low to middle income countries, which weakens the data on the occupational therapy workforce.

Opportunities for advancement of occupational therapy⁹

• International initiatives such as the World Health Organization (WHO) National Health Workforce Accounts provide a cross-national framework for workforce data collection that has been implemented across countries of varying income levels.
• WFOT is participating in a pilot WHO project to collect data regarding occupational therapists to include in the National Health Workforce Accounts. Strengthening occupational therapy workforce data should be part of such broader efforts for monitoring the entire health workforce.
• The WHO Guide for Rehabilitation Workforce Evaluation provides a cross-professional workforce assessment tool,²³ relevant for reliable and detailed data collection on the rehabilitation workforce, including the occupational therapy workforce.
• Since 2006, the WFOT Human Resources Project has biennially collected occupational therapy workforce data from its member organizations, albeit some countries are unable to contribute information for the identified data elements.¹

Long-Term Goals (three cycles of four years)

• WFOT member organisations systematically compile national workforce data aligned with an international framework for occupational therapy workforce data collection.
• WFOT member organisations provide complete, reliable occupational therapy data for national and international workforce monitoring initiatives, including the WFOT Human Resources Project.
• Regional or national workforce strengthening activities are explicitly informed by occupational therapy workforce data, which pinpoint specific workforce gaps and imbalances used to set specific targets and development plans.

Short-Terms Goals (one cycle of four years)

• WFOT leads the development of an international framework for occupational therapy workforce data collection that defines a minimum and supplemental workforce dataset and reporting procedures.
• WFOT member organizations (or other national bodies collecting workforce data) collect and report workforce data activities aligned with the international framework for occupational therapy workforce data collection.

Within this major strategic direction, four specific actions are articulated. The first envisions developing an international framework and toolkit for guiding national / jurisdictional stakeholders on collecting and integrating their occupational therapy workforce data. The second focuses on advocacy for including occupational therapy data into (inter) national monitoring activities. The third focuses on promoting the capacity of professional registration/licensing bodies for occupational therapy workforce data collection. The fourth focuses on the development of these or other bodies, where absent, to systematically collect occupational therapy workforce data.

Develop an international framework and toolkit that outlines a minimum workforce dataset, a supplemental dataset and ways to collect, integrate and report on the information.

Advocate for inclusion of occupational therapy supply data in (inter)national monitoring of health workforce data, tools and classification systems.

Promote the capacity of existing regulatory/licencing bodies to collect and report on minimum occupational therapy workforce datasets.

Promote the development of regulatory/licensing bodies to collect and report on minimum datasets for the occupational therapy workforce.