As a science-based health profession, occupational therapy involves the art and science of applying scientific knowledge to practice problems. Occupational therapy relies on the processes of applied scientific inquiry to translate knowledge from the basic sciences into clinical solutions to problems within our domain of concern. We call on basic science to inform our thinking and to gain an appreciation for and understanding of relevant practical problems. Occupational therapists are grounded in applied scientific inquiry because our raison d’être is to identify a course of action or to answer a specific question to satisfy a human need (Mosey, 1992).
For the past 60 years, the steady growth in the amount of money available from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) can be credited with stimulating much of the progress in modern medicine. Most of the money, however, was directed toward basic scientific research; only a relatively insignificant amount...
