Call for Papers: Special Edition 2024

Theme

Occupational Therapy Evidence for Impact: Why Evidence-Informed Practice Matters

Guest editors

Tania Rauch van der Merwe
Marieta Visser
Matty van Niekerk
Randy P. McCombie

Submission deadline: 31 April 2024

Timelines

Special issue release date:         31 August 2024
Deadline for submission:           31 April 2024 (submit onto the journal website)
Deadline for revisions:                5 June 2024
Notification of final decision:     15 July 2024
Publication date:                          August 2024

Background

Occupational therapy matters. Occupational therapists are trained to make a difference in people’s lives, for the whole of their lives.  The profession is foundationally underscored by an understanding of people as occupational beings; the intrinsic link between what people do and their health and well-being; as well as context, and the complexity thereof. Hence an argument can be made for not only the importance of occupational therapy services but perhaps also the indispensability thereof.  However, the impending implementation of NHI continues to remind the South African occupational therapy community that our inclusion in this discourse is at stake, largely because of a lack of evidence about the difference occupational therapy makes to the people who receive it. An analysis of the type of articles submitted to SAJOT revealed a pattern of continuous low levels of evidence.  While the profession will never have enough to say about its deep and continuous emerging understanding of the complex relationships between the multiple aspects of the occupational therapy domain, we are clearly in urgent and desperate need of high levels evidence about how occupational therapy impact people’s lives, and why it therefore, matters. The SAJOT editorial and guest editorial teams are therefore calling all occupational therapists in South Africa to rise to the challenge, submitting journal articles with Levels I and II evidence for a special edition to be published in August 2024.

Sub-themes include (e.g. Franzsen and Pretorius, 2023):

• Impact (long/medium/short term) of occupational therapy on people’s quality of life
• Impact of occupational therapy services in primary healthcare settings
• How occupational therapy services reduce hospital (re-)admissions, and duration of hospitalisation
• Cost-effectiveness of occupational therapy services
• Effective and/or inclusive occupational therapy service delivery to all stakeholders
• Effective collaborative/inter-professional practice
• Shared decision-making
• Evidence based practice and Evidence informed practice

Manuscript Information

Original, full-length research-based articles: innovative research that cover and provide empirical Level I evidence (e.g. systematic reviews, meta-analyses, randomised control trials), as well as Level II evidence (e.g. cohort studies).  See examples of possible overarching research questions by Franzsen and Pretorius (2023, http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?pid=S2310-38332023000100001&script=sci_arttext or https://sajot.org.za/index.php/sajot/article/view/874)

Original articles must fully comply with the South African Journal of Occupational Therapy guidelines for scientific articles.