Driving rehabilitation blends the principles of occupational therapy with driver education in medical implications affecting driving. Special needs drivers exhibit physical, sensory, cognitive, and perceptual problems when learning to drive. Anxiety creates a poorly understood obstacle in the development of compensatory and adaptive skills for the occupational therapy practitioner. High anxiety can produce a barrier to understanding instructions, learning new skills, and processing complex strategic cognitive tasks. The battery of tests frequently used by occupational therapists to measure potential fitness to drive does not include a evidence-based anxiety measurement assessment. The lack of evaluation and subsequent anxiety mangement strategies negatively affects the people participating in a driver rehabilitation program. The occupational therapy practitioner providing driver rehabilitation services must identify the anxiety level and establish a treatment plan to address the impact anxiety may have on lengths of service and the speed of skill development. The occupational therapy practitioner must implement an alleviation and treatment plan alteration in addressing the developmental stages for learning to drive. The capstone will advocate for evidence-based assessments and intervention tools with the application to the driver rehabilitation client with a multitude of challenges including anxiety.
