Change… and a holiday? The 24th National Conference and Exhibition

Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts. Arnold Bennett Regular readers of the Australian Occupational Therapy Journal will recall the letter to the Editor Scholarly communication and concerns for our conferences (Lannin et al., 2009) and the concern raised that occupational therapy associations were travelling down a path, where scientific conferences were more about current ideologies than scholarly research. In 2009, Occupational Therapy Australia (OTA) established a Conference Scientific Program Review Taskforce and in late 2009 performed a comprehensive review of the scientific review process. This resulted in three key changes related to how the Scientific Committee was formed, the rating system for abstracts and the process of abstract review. The resultant changes will be showcased at the upcoming 24th National Conference to be held 29 June – 1 July 2011 in the Gold Coast. Changes to the Scientific Review Committee membership stated for the first time that all members must demonstrate PhD research capacity or equivalent as an indicator for understanding of methodology. This committee was involved in review of the rating system and is solely responsible for the review of anonymous abstracts. Abstract review is the key point of programming of a scientific conference. Ideally, each participant should leave the meeting with the feeling of having been exposed to the state of the art research and clinical practice exemplars. Selecting the best papers is not an easy job: many abstracts are excellent and to rank them in a meritocratic order is complicated. To assist in ranking papers, this year OTA implemented a standardised rating system (based on the Canadian Occupational Therapy Association guidelines) with operationally defined rating categories in an effort to improve rater reliability. To address rating variability, each anonymous abstract was assessed separately by five members of the Scientific Committee. This will be the first time that abstracts were rated by a consistent group of methodological and content experts. While the new system is not without drawbacks, the largest being the time-consuming nature of abstract review, it does overcome the problems of multiple raters and the wide variability in abstract rating quality. The reliability of the new system of abstract review is currently being evaluated in an effort to ensure that these changes have achieved the desired outcomes. Finally, to accommodate a larger number of paper presentations, we have also included short paper sessions, designed where five or six papers on related topics presented successively followed then by questions and discussion with the audience. The Conference Scientific Program Committee has created a balanced programme of 352 papers, 61 posters, and nine invited workshops/symposia exploring evidence-based occupational therapy and the implications on the individual therapist, our clients and profession. And this year, we will also offer consumer presentations as part of our scientific programme, including a keynote address from Emma Gee an occupational therapist who suffered a stroke at the young age of 24. It must be noted that change is never easy. Occupational therapy is a practice-based profession and concerns were raised early by members suggesting that many were uncomfortable that change might mean the end of clinician-led papers. The Scientific Committee has worked hard to ensure that this is not the case. Fifty percent of the members of the Scientific Committee are clinician-researchers, and within the programme, more than 80 practice notes will be presented as platform papers. The Scientific Committee was also selected from a broad representation of our profession in an effort to ensure that all papers were able to be reviewed by methodology and content experts. This has resulted in a broad, representative programme, with 18 occupational therapy practice areas having dedicated streams. The importance of moving forwards as one unified group has never been so important. So, while change may feel uncomfortable, we must embrace it. This year we celebrate the birth of our national Association, the move towards national registration, and I invite all readers to join us at the (new) 24th National Conference in June. It will be a time to share experiences, knowledge and expectations to continue walking this path of change, together.

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