Leaning into our future!

1/1/2018

Happy New Year Everyone!
I wish you all the best in your personal and your professional lives in 2018.
Here are a few thoughts about "leaning into our future" as occupational therapy practitioners.
Thanks to the OT4OT administrators on Facebook for allowing candidates for AOTA Office to post on Mondays!

2 Comments

Shirish

1/11/2018 07:02:46 pm

Hello Brent,
How would you recommend OTA faculty respond to the growing (anecdotal) evidence regarding unemployment/underemployment of OTAs possibly due to saturation of academic programs in states like Florida? The AOTA workforce survey in 2015 has identified similar trends as documented on the link below:
https://www.aota.org/Education-Careers/Advance-Career/Salary-Workforce-Survey/future-ot-occupational-therapy-look-like.aspx

The anecdotal evidence reported by my current and former OTA students is similar to the comments found on this blog:
http://community.advanceweb.com/blogs/ot_14/archive/2013/10/18/the-future-of-cotas.aspx

Is anyone at AOTA/ACOTE concerned about these trends at all?

Thanks,
Shirish

Brent Braveman

1/14/2018 11:13:27 am

Hi Shirish,

Thanks for the question. Over the years I have heard comments of concern from staff at AOTA and members of ACOTE about saturation of the market in some areas (e.g. some parts of Florida and New York).

Overall I think the job outlook remains very strong for OTAs at the national level. Here is a link to the current BLS information on occupational therapy assistants https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes312011.htm#st.

I believe there are limited options that AOTA or ACOTE can take to artificially limit the growth of educational programs in specific areas of the country. ACOTE may be able to slow the rate of growth by limiting the number or pace of applications they review but If a college or university meets the criteria for accreditation they can move forward. The control is through a free market system that assumes that once a market is oversaturated with any product, the weakest links or lowest quality suppliers drop out.

There are many areas of the country where OTAs are in high demand. I appreciate that many times someone enters an OTA program with the hope of working locally rather than having to move somewhere else to find employment.

I realize this may not be a very satisfying answer......

Do you have any other thoughts?

Brent

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