| Summary: | Occupational therapy (OT) and applied behavior analysis (ABA) practitioners often collaborate when working with children and young adults with disabilities (McGinnis, 2013). OT and ABA practitioners are primed to collaborate due to many areas of overlap among each respective scope of practice; however, there is limited research to guide best practice for this collaborative partnership (Welch & Polatajko, 2016). According to a review of OT and ABA literature, in addition to the literature of other community-based, social services, and health care professions, there are four major barriers to interprofessional collaboration (IPC): (1) biases, (2) differing cultures, values, and professional languages, (3) overlaps in scopes of practice, and (4) poor communication and relationship-building skills (Kim et al., 2016; Peck & Norman, 1999; Rice et al., 2010). Due to a limited amount of accessible OT and ABA training interventions on collaboration, there is a need for an online, interactive, educational training to present evidence-based and theoretically-sound solutions for the barriers to collaboration. The proposed program is called Supporting Interprofessional Partnerships: An Educational Training for Collaboration Between Occupational Therapy and Applied Behavior Analysis Practitioners. The program’s educational content targets: (1) the definition, benefits, and barriers to IPC, (2) context-based information on ABA’s culture, values, professional language, and scope of practice, and (3) strategies to improve collaboration with ABA providers. Supporting Interprofessional Partnerships explores the working relationship between OT and ABA to improve collaboration as well as client, family, provider, and organizational outcomes.
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