Iðjuþjálfinn - 01.01.2019, Side 44

44
GREIN
Lena­Karin Erlandsson,
Reg. OT, Professor in Occupational Therapy,
Halmstad University, Sweden
I was recently invited to University of Montr-
eal, Canada, to hold a three-day course in
the ReDO-™ programme. We were 26
participants plus Susanne Bohs (my co-
-worker) and me. As usual, we started a
round of presentations. To my surprise,
there were five Occupational Therapists
(OTs) in the front row from Iceland (se pict-
ure below)! How strange is that? We had
gone all the way to Canada and among the
Canadians I find visitors from a special
place, for me. I have visited Iceland several
times since my husband is an Icelandic
man. This ReDO- course turned out to be
one of the amazing once, so far. I presented
course material that had been developed
and evaluated in a Swedish context, trying
to connect the content to Canadian
occupational therapy, also including the
Icelandic one.
So, where is the challenge in doing this? Af-
ter all, occupational therapy (OT) is a well-
-established profession internationally and
it should not be hard to present a new OT
method anywhere? To illustrate this
challenge, I will use two perspectives, first
the ReDO- programme and then, parts of
the framework that it consists of.
The ReDO- programme (Erlandsson 2013) is
a group intervention for people who ex-
perience ill health due to their everyday ?
and who need to change their pattern of
daily occupations to gain health and, for
example, work ability. Participants should,
after completing the programme, have
started a lasting change in their own patt-
erns of daily occupations. The programme
introduces tools for the participants to
learn and to use, to identify the unique
changes they need to make in their ev-
eryday. OTs lead the group sessions and
have a specific mission as experts in
occupation per se and, in how to visualize
and recognize what we do and how. At the
same time, in contrast to many other situ-
ations where OTs are working, OTs that lead
the ReDO- programme must identify
themselves as non-experts - in other
people’s challenges and problem-solving.
Being a ReDO-OT who works without giving
any advice or suggestions can be hard in
the beginning for colleagues who are used
to be solution focused and to be “the pro-
fession that solves almost any problem”. In
this intervention, the participants are the
ones that do the hard work, but of course
fully depending on the group leaders – and
the programme content. The ReDO-
programme provides the participants with
knowledge and understanding of how their
own unique patterns of daily occupations
are developed and what shapes them. In
that way, the participants’ own
occupational analyses result in individual
goals and strategies for how and what to
change, which in turn contributes to better
management of their everyday, better
health and more well-being.
The structure of the ReDO- programme, the
sessions and the included short seminars
are based on knowledge about human
occupation and the theoretical framework
called the ValMO- model (Persson, Erlands-
son, Eklund, & Iwarsson, 2001). It also
builds upon specific research on the comp-
lexity of patterns of daily occupations (e.g.,
Erlandsson & Eklund, 2001) and aspects of
how the patterns relate to health (e.g., Er-
landsson & Eklund, 2004; Erlandsson,
Rögnvaldsson, & Eklund, 2004; Johansson
Eklund &, Erlandsson, 2012).
The programme involves treatment in a
group and is planned as a course. Each
group consists of about 6-8 participants
and is led by one to two specially trained
OTs. ReDO-leaders take a three-day course
to get familiar with the framework, the res-
earch, and the specific manual and mater-
ial provided. The programme follows a
manual and the material for various
assessments, exercises and seminars are
handed out during the course. The ReDO-
programme consists of three phases over a
total of 16 weeks. Phase I and II are five
weeks each, and Phase III, a job placement,
lasts for six weeks (Figure 1). The phases
can be viewed through the glasses of
Wilcock’s (1999) concept of doing, being
and becoming, or in Icelandic gera, vera, og
verða. The first phase is about analysing
the doing (að gera). The second phase in-
troduces the being (að vera), in the sense of
reflecting on what is being done and how it
is experienced. The third and last phase
regards applying strategies for change in
the own every-day, the start of the new fut-
ure, what to become (að verða).
The name ReDO- is trademarked and there
are two reasons for this. First, to secure the
method within the OT profession; only OTs
that are certified as ReDO-leaders may use
the manual and the course material and
call the intervention ReDO. There are very
few interventions that are purely OT inter-
ventions, where occupation and health is
INTRODUCING THE ReDO-™
PROGRAMME AND THE ValMO-
MODEL IN THE ICELANDIC CONTEXT
OTs from Reykjavik and the same work place, Reykjalundur,
participating in the ReDO course in Montreal, Canada, May 13­15,
2019. From left to right Herdís Halldórsdóttir, Karen Björg
Gunnarsdóttir, (Lena­Karin, Susanne), Sigríður Bjarnadóttir, and
Erica do Carmo Ólason. Missing in the photo is Petrea Guðný
Sigurðardóttir from Akureyri.