An Occupation-Based Review of Outcome Measures used to Assess Hand Function after Burn Injury

While occupation began as the central concept of occupational therapy at the dawn of the profession, the use of occupation throughout the therapy process, including assessment, has wavered in recent decades. Occupation is defined as meaningful and purposeful activities that individuals do to occupy their time and attention. The use of occupation-based assessments is vital to establishing care with an occupational focus. The purpose of this paper is to review the outcome assessment tools commonly used in the burn literature to evaluate hand function and critique the presence of occupation in each assessment using the Occupation-Based Practice Assessment (OBPA). Knowledge of the occupational nature of assessments is important to the delivery of an occupational therapy evaluation comprised of a battery of assessments inclusive of discrete measures of movement as well as performance-based tools to represent the person from an occupational perspective. Many outcome measures used in upper extremity burn rehabilitation are discrete in nature and do not measure occupations of clients. The Suitcase Packing Activity (SPA) may be a viable addition to an assessment battery to address this essential need.