Driving assessment procedures of occupational therapists: some results from a national survey of OT driver assessors

In Victoria, on-road procedures for use by specialist Occupational Therapists (OTs) in
assessing drivers with functional impairments were developed in the mid-1980s,
leading to establishment of standard requirements and an associated curriculum for
postgraduate specialist training of OTs. This was followed by the specification of a
standard set of ?core competency? requirements for OT driver assessors, along with
Victorian licensing authority guidelines for their service delivery and training (OT-
Australia:Victoria, 1998; VicRoads, 1998). Such procedures are now applied
nationally by OTs in assessing drivers with a wide range of health, disability or
ageing-related issues.

This paper presents some of the results of a nationwide survey of OT driver assessors
to document details of current procedures. Focus groups to investigate and further
explore some of the issues covered by the questionnaire were also conducted, but
results of these are reported elsewhere (Di Stefano, 2007). This research was part of a
larger project to develop improvements to the on-road assessment component of these
procedures.