Objectives: The purpose of this survey research was to Investigate how well the national occupational therapy certification examination was reflecting the current occupational therapy practice.
Method: The researchers developed a survey with input from 159 occupational therapists out of 230. The content of the survey consisted of four areas which were demographic information, the relationship between the current national occupational therapy certification examination, the tasks that occupational therapists perform in the clinical settings, and the knowledge bases that occupational therapists need to know to perform the tasks.
Results: The findings can be summarized as follows; 1) All the current examination subjects except for ADLs (activities of daily living) had low relationship with clinical occupational therapy practice; 2) 84% of the respondents agreed on that the current examination needed to be revised based on the tasks that occupational therapists actually do in the clinical settings; 3) the new subjects proposed for the national occupational therapy certification examination showed high relationship with the clinical occupational therapy practice; 4) the new subjects were composed of occupational therapy evaluation, treatment plan, intervention, re-evaluation, management, and professionalism.
Conclusions: The findings are expected to be useful for revising the content of the current national occupational therapy certification examination and developing occupational therapy curriculum of the new educational programs.