Delineating central explanations on the articulation and construction of professional identity within the Maltese occupational therapy profession

Mifsud, Rene 2021. Delineating central explanations on the articulation and construction of professional identity within the Maltese occupational therapy profession. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Aim and Focus: To gain an in-depth understanding of how professional identity is articulated and constructed by Maltese occupational therapists through their daily experiences of it in the main practice settings. Research Question: How is Professional Identity Articulated and Constructed within the Practice Environment of Occupational Therapy in Malta? Background and Rationale: Professional identity has been defined as the perspective that binds members of a profession together and gives them a sense of themselves and a collective public identity. It has been posited that by not having a clear professional self-identity, practitioners may experience a challenge explicating who they are to third parties in the field. In Malta, the profession of occupational therapy seems to be persistently confused with other professions and, as a professional body, it appears to be limited in conveying to the general public and other professions its specific contribution and role in healthcare. This situation appears to be compounded by, or may be the result of, the profession being a relatively small component of the workforce, combined with problems of recruitment of students into the university programme and some problems with retention of qualified staff. These issues are considered as symptomatic of professional identity issues underpinning the occupational therapy profession in Malta. Methodology and Methods: This study adopted a qualitative, constructivist approach as befits the nature of an inquiry concerning identity construction. Qualitative case study methodology was used, with an emphasis on data triangulation. Data were generated from reiterative cycles of ten focus groups undertaken with occupational therapy clinicians (n=39) at the main public service sites and seven individual key informant interviews with occupational therapy managers. Concurrent analysis of the data followed the principles of thematic analysis. Findings: Two principal themes were constructed from the data with an attendant cluster of subthemes. The theme ‘The Experience of Professional Identity’ encompasses a range of concepts assembled from the participants' experiences of their professional identity in the public domain. The second theme ‘The Articulation of iii Professional Identity,’ covers concepts representative of the challenges that participants experience when defining and explaining the nature of their profession and finding its unique quality. Discussion: The interpretation of the findings suggests that the multiple and disparate epistemologies and the complexity of interventions that underpin the professional makeup of occupational therapy could be responsible for the challenges that practitioners experience to express their identity within a unitary concept. It has also been theorised that the said epistemological diversity translates into a range of diverse roles, different ways of doing and approaches that occupational therapists embody, and these, in turn, impact on how the public and/or other professionals perceive the profession. Uniqueness and Contribution of the Study: This study is the first to research the representative practice milieu of the occupational therapy profession in Malta. It has fundamental value for the Maltese occupational therapy community and for students as it manages to portray professional identity tensions experienced in the occupational therapy profession through a lens of rationality as a result of the central explanations developed in the discussion to frame the findings

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Healthcare Sciences
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	14 December 2021
Last Modified:	04 Jan 2023 02:33
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/146116

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