Challenges, Attitudes and Skills of Occupational Therapists towards Pre-Driving Assessments Practices in Malaysia

Abstract

A pre-driving assessment usually involves standardized and non-standardized tests to examine people with disability’s skills for safe driving. However, it is still unknown to what extent the pre-driving assessments are being practised among occupational therapists in Malaysia. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the association between the occupational therapist's challenges, attitudes, and skills towards practising driving rehabilitation and explore the most used pre-driving assessment. A cross-sectional study had been conducted from July to September 2020. The convenient sampling was used to recruit experienced occupational therapists in driving rehabilitation. A total of 53 therapists had completed an online survey. According to the results, the bivariate correlation between skills and challenges was positive and strong (rѕ=0.680, p<0.05). A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) indicated a significant effect on the combined dependent variables of challenges, attitudes, and skills between workplace variables, F(3,49)=4.521 p=0.007, partial Ƞ²=0.217. This study found that the most used standardized assessment was the range of motion (n=39, 73.6%) and the right & left discrimination was the most used non-standardized assessment (n=40, 75.5%). This study’s findings identified that occupational therapists challenges and attitudes towards driving rehabilitation are significantly associated with the skills to practice driving rehabilitation. Malaysian occupational therapists working in the government sector reported more better skills than those working in the private sector. Furthermore, the type of pre-driving assessment used are numerous and vary from setting to setting. This study hopes to benefit occupational therapists and related rehabilitation practitioners towards a holistic understanding of Malaysia's driving rehabilitation practices.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/JSKM-2022-2001-13