Introduction / Rationale: What defines our quality of life? How does our health influence it? While these are crucial questions, the key concern for the occupational therapists is: How can our interventions enhance the health and, consequently, the quality of life of our clients?
Objectives: Explore innovative methods for measuring quality of life using an occupation-based approach.
Methods / Approach: A thorough scoping review of respected medical databases (e.g., Medline, CINAL) from the years 2019 to 2024 discovered seventeen articles that reported better participation in life due to occupational therapy (OT).
Results / Practice Implications: The evidence suggests that OT interventions do improve people’s ability to do daily routines and life tasks. Therapists used different surveys to evaluate quality of life. The most common was Short Form – 36 (SF-36) copyrighted by RAND Corporation. The most common way to measure participation in life was the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM). Surprisingly, only six of seventeen articles used a theoretical lens. Three studies used World Health Organization guidelines; three studies used OT guiding principles or models of practice. Notably, the Lifestyle Performance Model (Velde & Fidler, 2002), which clearly articulates how participation influences quality of life, was not referenced.
Conclusion / Contribution to the occupational therapy profession: Occupational therapy provides a unique and innovative perspective on describing and measuring quality of life. This perspective should play a more prominent role in discussions about quality of life as a healthcare outcome. As professionals, we must advocate for the recognition of this connection and demonstrate how central it is to defining and measuring quality of life.