Book Reviews |
Quick Reference Dictionary for Occupational Therapy
Edited by Karen Jacobs and Laela Jacobs. Published by SLACK Incorporated, 4th edition. ISBN 1-55642-656-9. Price: £19.95.
This pocket-sized reference is co-edited by a well-published American occupational therapist (OT), a former President and Vice President of the American OT Association, an ergonomist and a clinical professor of occupational therapy at Boston University, along with her daughter, a rehab manager and OT.
It is principally aimed at American OTs, as a reference text/aide memoir and while it has much of worldwide application, a number of the references and appendices are relevant only to practice in the USA.
Less than half the book's 589 pages constitute the dictionary, with the rest devoted to some 60 appendices, which are a slightly confusing mix of clinical guides, definitions and reference material. Some of this material is very helpful in summarizing clinical practice, examination and terms—but other parts are really targeted at the American OT practitioner (for example, a list of Past American OT Association Presidents).
There is a lot of information here in a relatively small space, but for a UK occupational physician, it may prove frustrating—occupational health (OH), for example, can quickly be found to represent ‘Office of the Handicapped’, with no reference to OH or medicine, and International Classification of Diseases (ICD) code is apparently only to be used for ‘billing and reimbursement purposes!’. That is not to say that the material is not useful in the UK, there are some excellent short sections of clear relevance to good occupational health practice: such as that which summarizes (by spinal cord level) the muscles, movements and functional impacts of injury, but a UK reader will need to pick and choose the sections to use.
The content is factually correct, but needs to be considered in the context of its target audience and it will be of most use to OT practitioners and students, particularly in the US and for this audience it is good value for money. For occupational physicians, there is useful content, but it is much too specific to occupational therapy and American practice to be of value.
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