Relation between motivational potential and career path in occupational therapy

Career path is the sequence of individual attitudes and behaviors in the field of activities and experiences related to their work. For a career path, people need motivating factors. Thus, identifying motivating factors and career path is important in any profession. Therefore, the present study examined the relationship between motivational potential and career path in occupational therapy.
A total of 105 occupational therapists participated in the present cross-sectional study. To examine themotivational power of occupational therapists, John Wagner’s validated job characteristic model questionnaire was used. Also, Delong’s career path evaluation questionnaire was used to examine participant’s career. Data was analyzed using SPSS (v.19).
The results revealed that in the field of occupational therapy, Task Significance, Autonomy, Skill Variety, Task Identity, and Feedback were important for occupational therapists, respectively. Among career anchors, creativity anchor was the most important followed by the Service, Technical competence, Autonomy, security, Management competence, skill variety, and task identity. In addition, a significant relationship was observed between the potential motivation and management competence anchors.
The present study showed that the participating occupational therapists attach great importance to providing service to their clients using creativity in services and taking advantage of their technical skills and see them as the most important factors in the growth of their career path.