Evidence for occupational therapy interventions: a student educational assignment.

As an educational assignment, two classes of graduate students who had recently completed Level II fieldwork listed interventions they had either witnessed or implemented at their sites. Interventions were then randomly assigned to a different group of graduate students in an upper level research class. Searching the literature from the past 10 years, students located the literature providing evidence for the efficacy of these interventions and categorized them according to five hierarchical levels of effectiveness. Results across both classes indicated support at the two highest levels (I and II) for the following interventions: Constraint-Induced Treatment; Hippotherapy; Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation and Multisensory Handwriting Programs. Students indicated that this educational experience greatly helped to improve their understanding of research and emphasized the importance of researching the literature supporting interventions as they relate to current practice.