PTE Journal Club Meeting: January

 For the January PTE Journal Club meeting, we discussed the article "Occupational Therapy Group Interventions in Oncology: A Scoping Review". This study examined the association between occupational therapy-based oncology groups and improved functional activity of daily living outcomes for adults with cancer. By being functional, you will see an improvement and an increase engagement in ADLs. The population that they looked at involved adults in the inpatient and outpatient setting that had a diagnosis of cancer. They looked at ages 25-28 years old. Most of the individuals in this study were women even though there were a few men. There was various types of cancer and participants were at different stages with their cancer. This study was a scoping review. It was chosen to explore all existing and accessible peer-reviewed evidence on the topic. There were eight research studies chosen for this article. There were only eight articles that they found that met all the inclusion criteria. The articles reviewed were 2 randomized controlled trials, 1 case study, 1 descriptive exploratory research study, 1 mixed-methods study, 2 pretest-posttest studies, and 1 longitudinal prospective comparative study. The results indicated that occupational therapy groups led to a significant increase in occupational performance and satisfaction, an improvement in functioning, and a decrease in fatigue. There is benefits of shared experience. This study was found to valid and reliable because they use inclusion and exclusion criteria, with an aim to provide a clear and reproducible methodology. The search strategy could also be easily repeated. Some of the recommendations for future studies that we discussed included a larger sample size. They could also have a more consistent type of cancer that they are looking at and specify the stages each individual is at. If they had more inpatient results, it would help more. We also said that they could assess the impact of IADLs.  The frames of references that went along with this study included social participation, MOHO, PEO, and Canadian Model of Occupational Performance. This scoping review demonstrated that OT groups in oncology lead to positive patient outcomes. The findings from this review not only are applicable to OT practitioners working in oncology-related settings, but also are relevant for practitioners who work with patients with caner in other settings because patients with cancer are treated both in general hospitals and units as well as in cancer-specific centers. I really enjoyed reading this study and discussing it further with my fellow classmates. It was a good article since we don't dive deep into oncology and OT during our coursework.