Relevance, resilience, and ageism: A bright future for occupational therapy and healthy ageing, Sylvia Docker Lecture 2021.

ABSTRACT

Our core professional values have been enduring and remarkably relevant to decades past and times present. Our values ensure the currency of our professional contribution, our resilience, readiness, and adaptability, to meet the challenges as we move into the next decade and beyond. In this Sylvia Docker lecture, I draw on my career experience from practice and academic research to examine this premise. The social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic gave us all a picture of what our clients experience in an enduring way and the challenges of maintaining healthy lifestyles, meaningful occupations, and life roles. One of the greatest population challenges of this century is healthy ageing and the impact that ageism has on health. We live in a society that is ageist, and such cultural thinking impacts our beliefs and expectations as it does for older adults themselves. As occupational therapists, we strive to maintain our relevance, and we drive transformational change through using research-informed evidence-based approaches and adopting enablement programmes that meet the needs of people who are ageing. While prominent in enablement and therapeutic approaches, we are not immune to ageism. Being exposed to ageist views throughout our lives means, we internalise these and believe that ageing is a process of decline. Such self-perceptions and stereotyping impact the health of older people and influence the choices we make in our everyday practice. There are examples of emerging evidence and approaches that will meet these challenges and ways to re-frame ageist thinking. Occupational therapy values of working with people's strengths, what they can do, indicates we are well placed to engage and provide leadership in moving societal views. Addressing ageism requires self-reflection and action in order to be part of changing the narrative on ageing.