Validating an occupational therapist's assessment in a pre-diagnostic clinic: A strategy to improve access to arthritis care.
Published: 2006
Language: eng
Number of pages: 117
ISBN-13: 9780494161500
Description: As the number of people with arthritis increase, the need for arthritis related health care services will also increase. Due to physician shortages, ensuring timely access to arthritis care has become more challenging. Overcoming this challenge to provide timely access to care is particularly important for individuals with inflammatory arthritis (IA), where early intervention play a key role to reduce, delay and prevent disability. Early intervention for likely IA individuals can occur when they receive timely access to rheumatologists' care. One barrier to early intervention is increased number of inappropriate IA referrals to rheumatologists. Therapists experienced in the area of rheumatology often possess the assessment skills to detect the presence of joint inflammation, and maybe able to pre-assess IA referrals to reduce the number of inappropriate IA referrals. This study was to determine the feasibility of using an experienced therapist in rheumatology to triage referrals for 2 rheumatologists' offices.
Notes: Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-06, page: 2793.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Toronto, 2006.

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