Introduction: Palliative care is health care that is intended for people who are living with an incurable disease. The goal of the care is to alleviate the symptoms of the disease, improve the quality of life and the process of dying. Purpose: With the diploma thesis, our intention was to perform a review of literature and collect data from the Slovene and English literature on the subject of occupational therapy in the field of palliative care. Methods: We performed a review of literature. We limited our search to the year of publication, specifically after 2010. We searched for literature in the English and Slovene languages in the databases Web of science, Cinahl, OTseeker and information systems COBISS, using the key words Occupational therapy, Occupational therapist, OT (delovna terapija), palliative care, end of life care, terminal care, and hospice care (paliativna oskrba) in combination with Boolean operators (AND, OR). Results: We included 9 articles in the final analysis. Finally, we provided 5 common topics: Occupation, important medium in palliative care; Adaptation; Education; Death of the user and Obstacles. Discussion and conclusion: With the review of selected literature, we gained insight into the domain of the occupational therapist in the field of palliative care. We found that occupation is an important medium in the field of palliative care. The task of the therapist is to use their knowledge and experience to include the user in occupations they find reasonable. By doing so, the user is allowed to participate in occupations, thereby helping them to recover their lost roles. By adapting the user’s environment and living areas and by consultation and the demonstration of therapy equipment, they are assisted in regaining their independence. This contributes to the relief of relatives and other persons. With the help of various techniques, the therapist raises awareness and educates the user’s wider social environment, including family, relatives, caregivers and other healthcare professionals. The therapist leads the user through the process of dying and death, enables him to participate in occupations and, with the help of practical tasks such as will writing, the user is shown how to have a quiet and peaceful end of life. A large obstacle to occupational therapy is the ignorance of the occupation and role of the occupational therapist of health professionals, users and their families. Due to the lack of occupational therapist training and finances, the number of occupational therapists employed is decreasing. All of this leads to a lack of public and private palliative institutions, which are often inflexible regarding the younger population of users and occupational therapy staff work overload.
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