Australian Occupational Performance Model (OPM)

Introduction

• Developed by Christine Chapparo & Judy Ranka in 1986 at the University of Sydney.
• Based on assumptions about human occupations, performance, and self-organization.

Key Assumptions

Human Occupations

• Holistic belief: Interacting elements of mind, spirit, and body.
• Engagement provides reality, mastery, competence, autonomy, and temporal organization.
• Promotes health and occupational identity.

Human Performance

• Goes beyond action to include knowing and being.
• Involves reacting under circumstances or fulfilling purposes.

Self-Organization

• People create patterns of behaviors.
• Behaviors occur based on interaction with the environment.

Relationship Focus

• Revolves around person, environment, and occupation.

Major Constructs

1. Occupational Performance

   • Every purposeful action related to daily living.
   • Involves motor, physical, mental, and emotional processes.
   • Ability to perceive, desire, recall, plan, and carry out roles for self-maintenance, productivity, leisure, and rest.

2. Occupational Performance Roles

   • Complex behaviors for social involvement and productivity.
   • Includes family, social, occupational, cultural, and sexual-personal roles.
   • Aim to preserve, maintain, and develop valued roles.

3. Occupational Performance Areas

   • Self-Maintenance: Tasks for health and well-being (e.g., dressing, cooking).
   • Productivity/School: Tasks for producing goods/services.
   • Leisure/Play: Tasks for entertainment and creativity.
   • Rest: Purposeful non-activity like relaxation.

4. Occupational Performance Components

   • Involves human and task components (physical, psychosocial, cognitive, sensory, motor).
   • Focus on analyzing components for better understanding and intervention.

5. Core Elements

   • Spirit, mind, and body interaction for health and well-being.
   • Spirit: Harmony, hope, and search for meaning.
   • Mind: Conscious and unconscious intellect.
   • Body: Physical human structure.

6. Environment

   • Categorized into physical, sensory, cultural, and social environments.

7. Space

   • Describes external and internal space, including physical matter and spatial experience.

8. Time

   • System of relating successive events.
   • Includes physical time and felt time.

Conclusion

• Key aspects of the OPM highlight the complex interaction between various constructs and their impact on occupational therapy.

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