Authors (including presenting author) :
Fung MLE(1),Lam CK(1),Chan F(2),Leung KY(1),Louie TMF(1)
Affiliation :
(1)Department of Occupational Therapy, Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Hospital,(2)Department of Psychiatry, North District Hospital
Introduction :
A joint clinic with medical officer and occupational therapist has been pioneered since 2010 in NDH. It is a Specialized Out-Patient Department (SOPD) clinic which provide psychiatric assessment and treatments for substance abusers.
Since 2017, together with medical officer consultations, occupational therapist provided brief metacognitive therapy has been introduced during the joint clinic and immediate occupational therapy (OT) interventions was offered after medical officer consultation. This service model was supported by Beat Drug Fund which was aimed at helping clients cease SA behavior, improving their occupational life-functioning and enhancing their compliance on attending OT rehabilitation.
This model help building up rapport with clients, engaging clients immediately and instilling clients’ insight to current mal adaptive behaviors. It serves to elicit clients’ motivation to cease substance abuse. Also, this could capture the golden time to enhance the clients’ engagement so as to improve their compliance in OT sessions with further metacognitive therapy and occupational lifestyle redesign in later stage.
Objectives :
This paper is to study clients’ follow up compliance, effectiveness and efficiency of service from July 2017 to June 2020
Methodology :
A retrospective review was done on patient compliance in attending OT intervention, pre and post assessment on self-efficacy of drug avoidance, frequency of drug use and occupational life functioning. Wilcoxon signed rank test was used to compare the self-efficacy in drug avoidance, occupational life functioning performance before and immediately after treatment sessions.
Result & Outcome :
There were 230 cases referred to occupational therapy from July 2017 to June 2020. There was full compliance to the first attendance in OT interventions. A total of 64 cases were completed the program, with pre and post assessments and full attendance in all seven intervention sessions. The gender distribution was 17% male and 83% female. Eighty-six percent of cases showed significant improvement in self efficacy in drug avoidance (p=0.000) and 58.6% of cases showed significant improvement in their life functioning i.e. work, leisure, home-maker and social aspects (p=0.000). Moreover, 71.4% of cases reported reduced drug use frequency. Thirty-seven percent of cases reported cessation of substance abuse and 100% of cases reported prevention of relapse.
In conclusion, the results indicated that immediate OT intervention after medical consultation has improved patient compliance in OT intervention, improved follow-up compliance and their occupational life functioning performance. This kind of service model could be beneficial to client and OT as it can enhance the engagement effectively which can also improve the effectiveness and efficacy of OT interventions.
