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KEY WORDS
* health professions
* hyperchange
* leadership
* occupational therapy
* professional education
We live in a time of hyperchange-rapid, dramatic, complex, and unpredictable change occurring in today's society, which creates unprecedented challenges. High-speed advances in technology and knowledge and changes in society require that we shift our paradigms. We must become innovators of change. This lecture examines how occupational therapy is reacting to hyperchange as a profession. How is hyperchange influencing the roles and responsibilities of practitioners? How is hyperchange affecting education? And, in accepting hyperchange, what can we do as occupational therapy practitioners, educators, and scholars to shape our own future?
Hinojosa, J. (2007). Becoming innovators in an era of hyperchange [Eleanor Clarke Slagle Lecture]. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 61, 629-637.
We are living in a time of rapid and unpredictable change. Advances in knowledge and technology have made our lives more interconnected and complex. New expectations are changing the dynamics of our personal and professional lives. We're speeding up and struggling to hold onto control of all our responsibilities, both personally and professionally. We are living in a time of hyperchange.
I've become extremely aware of how it is affecting my life and the people around me. My personal to-do list seems endless, and deadlines are getting shorter and shorter. Everyone around me seems too busy. I'm not sure exactly what they're doing, but they're busy doing it. I have to make professional decisions quicker than ever before. The very pace of my work world seems faster. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with the amount of new knowledge and emerging technologies I'm expected to master.
How is hyperchange altering our personal and professional role`s and responsibilities? How is it affecting occupational therapy education, practice, and research? In preparing this lecture, I came across a tale from India about three fish.1 I think the fable's moral is particularly fitting with this topic:
Three fish lived in a pond. One was named "Plan Ahead," another was "Think Fast," and the third was called "Wait and See." One day, they heard a fisherman say that he was going to cast his net in their pond the next day.
"Plan Ahead" said, "I'm swimming down the river tonight!"
"Think Fast" said, "I'm sure...