Arthritis-Related Occupational Therapy: Making Invisible Ruling Relations Visible Using Institutional Ethnography

Abstract

Introduction: Occupational therapists' intention of enabling women with rheumatoid arthritis to participate in everyday life is fraught with challenges in everyday practice. Method: Inspired by institutional ethnography, this paper aims to make explicit how the work of occupational therapists in an outpatient rheumatology hospital setting is governed within invisible, ruling relations. An analytical description of the first author's clinical experience was a standpoint from which to explicate how occupational therapy is coordinated to the ruling relations of the Austrian health care system. Findings: Occupational therapy practice and research are ruled within a positivist, body-focused, medical apparatus, which renders largely invisible occupational therapists' knowledge of enabling people to engage in occupations that are meaningful to them. Conclusion: Occupational therapists have professional power that can be asserted by strategically using occupational therapy specific knowledge and language in textually mediated practices, from assessments and case files to media images, to give greater visibility and influence to the profession's work of enabling occupation.