Transition to practice in supercomplex environments: are occupational therapy graduates adequately prepared?

<span style="font-size: 12px">The authors of this viewpoint initially came together as </span><span style="font-size: 12px">colleagues to debate whether occupational therapy curricula (the programmes that each author teaches into) </span><span style="font-size: 12px">prepared students to not only survive but thrive within </span><span style="font-size: 12px">the increasingly complex or supercomplex world of professional practice (Barnett, 2011). Through reflective </span><span style="font-size: 12px">conversations on our collective experiences working </span><span style="font-size: 12px">with students at capstone (transition-to-practice) level, </span><span style="font-size: 12px">coupled with further exploration of literature surrounding graduate attributes, employability and professional </span><span style="font-size: 12px">issues within occupational therapy practice our attention focussed on capacities of agency and political skill, </span><span style="font-size: 12px">and specifically, the extent to which our graduates are </span><span style="font-size: 12px">explicitly or implicitly prepared to be agentic and politically adept in practice. In the context of this viewpoint, </span><span style="font-size: 12px">we refer to agency as an intentional motivation to work </span><span style="font-size: 12px">toward strategic goals (both personal and organisational). As a construct, Ferris et al. (2007) propose that political skill is comprised of four critical dimensions: social </span><span style="font-size: 12px">astuteness; interpersonal influence; networking ability and </span><span style="font-size: 12px">apparent sincerity. Early professional success in most </span><span style="font-size: 12px">contemporary workplaces we argue, as have others (e.g. </span><span style="font-size: 12px">Pollard, Sakellariou & Kronenburg, 2008), relate to graduates’ political adeptness.</span>