Jesse Vallera

Evidence-Based Reflection
In my journey throughout the occupational therapy program at Touro
University Nevada, I have found that evidence-based practice is valuable and
it can be applied to assessments and treatments with justification about how
patients can improve. In the past, I had three research positions including
psychology, cardiology, and oncology, and when I was exposed to
occupational therapy research and scholarly articles, I thought it was a
different way of thinking about therapy and it opened my eyes using critical
thinking and clinical reasoning with many diverse diagnoses and populations.
In my first semester, we were exposed to a small population for only our
cohort students in quantitative research. The second semester we
conducted qualitative research and gather data using background, case
studies, and formal and informal interviews. All of my research culminated in
the fourth semester that Peter Wallace and I conducted a systematic review
and now I am adept in gathering evidence-based articles efficiently. I
appraised and critiqued these articles and now I am familiar to find new
articles on fieldwork as an occupational therapy practitioner. I now know
that occupational therapy is essential for our profession using evidencebased interventions and assessments. It is now my duty to provide
evidence-based interventions to my clients and to stay current on any new
technology in order to provide the best quality of care to my future clients.
Furthermore, if I specialize in any type of practice, such as scuba therapy,

hippo therapy, hand therapy, neuro-rehabilitation, etc. I will continue to

expand the database for the evidence-based occupational therapy
profession.