<Insert Table 1 around here>
In synthesis, the Strengths were related to the identification of
workforce research trends, gaps, leverage points, and
profession-specific workforce findings that emerged from
cross-professional endeavours.
The Weaknesses include a shortage of workforce research, outdated
research findings, lack of uniform and readily available workforce
datasets, large heterogeneity in continuous professional development
requirements, absence of workforce research programs, over-reliance on
descriptive and non-experimental research, rare availability of research
on some workforce topics (e.g., international mobility, diversity), and
lack of comprehensive situational analysis or deliberative workforce
planning and evaluation, among others.
The Opportunities include the existence of guidance and tools for
strengthening the health and rehabilitation workforce worldwide, the
increased membership from LMICs in WFOT as the international
professional federation, and the opportunity to use licensing or
registration bodies as a more reliable source of occupational therapy
workforce data, to name a few.
Finally, Threats include, but are not limited to, the suboptimal
funding of occupational therapy workforce research, the lack of
profession-specific data on cross-professional datasets and studies,
suboptimal educational capacity in LMICs, frequent lack of professional
regulation and reliable workforce data collection, and the current lack
of occupational therapy as a discrete profession in the International
Standard Classification of Occupations.
Additions that emerged from
the experts’ feedback
Components of the final SWOT analysis that emerged specifically from the
experts’ input (i.e., bullets without a supportive reference in the
Table 1) are outlined below.
Specifically, the additions are related to Opportunities arising
from increased societal participation and economic productivity of
populations served by occupational therapy as result of workforce scale
up investments, as well from the increasing number of occupational
therapists with doctoral and master’s level education able to undertake
workforce research. An additional Threat was identified in
relation to occupational therapy being seen as a lower priority in the
health agenda because of a focus on functional and wellbeing outcomes
versus survival or other medical outcomes. Finally, the importance of
one Weakness was reinforced, notably, the lack of labor market or
economic analyses for occupational therapy (e.g., cost of scale ups;
return-of-investment analyses); although identified in the scoping
reviews,18 this weakness was not explicitly outlined
in the initial SWOT.