Promoting Health and Wellbeing
Occupational Therapy Worldview Applied to Life Care Planning
Life care planning is a transdisciplinary specialty practice. This means that there are a variety of professionals who practise life care planning. In Canada, this routinely includes occupational therapists, other allied health professionals, nurses, as well as rehabilitation and vocational counsellors. Each professional is expected to adhere to the current standards of practice specific to life care planning, as well as their individual scope of practice and professional standards set by their regulatory body. Life care planners are expected to maintain licensure with their professional regulatory body (e.g., The College of Occupational Therapists of Ontario).
Each life care planner’s professional training and experience, as well as their scope of practice, shapes their worldview and approach to the life care planning process.
Occupational Therapy
In 2025, the World Federation of Occupational Therapy approved the following updated definition of occupational therapy:
Occupational therapy promotes health and wellbeing by supporting participation in meaningful occupations that people want, need, or are expected to do.
The focus is on you
Occupational therapists focus on enabling clients to participate in activities that are essential and meaningful to them. These activities are referred to as occupations. The occupations are commonly classified into three broad categories:
Self-care
Helping individuals with self-care, including dressing, eating, staying safe at home, and navigating their community.
Productivity
Supporting productivity through activities such as employment, caring for family, and studying.
Leisure
Improving leisure by helping individuals engage in hobbies, sports, and social activities.
Health is dynamic
Occupational therapists recognize that health is dynamic and presents an interactive relationship encompassing physical, cognitive, and emotional health considerations. Holistic health is richly influenced by the characteristics of the environment (e.g., physical, social, cultural, financial, institutional) in which each individual lives and interacts.
Occupational therapists believe that occupation:
- Gives meaning to life
- Is a vital determinant of health, well-being, and social justice
- Organizes behaviour and routines
- Develops and evolves over the lifespan
- Shapes, and is shaped by, environments
- Possesses therapeutic potential
Townsend, E. A., & Polatajko, H. J. (2007). Enabling occupation II: Advancing an occupational therapy vision for health, well-being & justice through occupation. Ottawa: CAOT Publications.
Given the holistic scope of occupational therapy—addressing physical, cognitive, and mental health considerations—occupational therapists are uniquely positioned to conduct comprehensive assessments of clients’ idiosyncratic impairments. These assessments help identify how impairments translate into functional restrictions, both currently and anticipated over the lifespan. The goal of a life care plan is to restore, as reasonably possible, the individual’s functioning to its pre-injury state, addressing probable needs to promote meaningful participation and enhance quality of life.