OTR Exam Sections and Subjects

The OTR exam has 180 items, including single-response multiple-choice items and scenario sets. Use the content domains below to organize what you study.

This domain accounts for 23% of the OTR exam. Its tasks cover the client, assessment, and activity analysis.

• Identify influences on occupational performance, including values, beliefs, and spirituality. Consider development and aging, the expected course of the condition, anatomy and function, and the client's experiences and identity.

• Assess the client using relevant information and assessment tools. Consider how to engage the client in the assessment process.

• Analyze activities by identifying their demands. Consider personal and environmental factors that affect performance.

This domain accounts for 23% of the OTR exam. Its tasks address decisions about the intervention plan and collaboration.

• Combine quantitative findings, such as numerical results, with qualitative findings, such as descriptive information. Use the combined findings to make planning decisions.

• Collaborate on the plan. Understand team roles, shared plans, care coordination, priorities, and the client's ability to understand health information.

• Review and modify the plan. Consider the client's context, intervention effectiveness, needed adaptations, and precautions.

This domain accounts for 38% of the OTR exam. It covers intervention choices and how you manage their use.

• Select preparatory techniques and consider the treatment setting. Review wound care, superficial heat and cold, and other physical agents.

• Support participation through leisure, play, graded activities, and groups. Review cognitive, visual, perceptual, and sensory processing, ways to compensate for or restore abilities, activity adaptations, and prevention. Review eating and swallowing, employment and transitions, transfers, wellness, and mental health.

• Use rehabilitation interventions, including exercise and movement retraining. Address pain, desensitization, edema, and scars. Review posture, balance, body mechanics, and breathing.

• Select orthoses and prostheses. Consider the factors that guide selection and how to train the client to use them.

• Select seating, assistive technology, and mobility equipment. Assess suitability and plan training in equipment use.

• Improve access through ergonomics, universal design, and modifications to the environment.

This domain accounts for 16% of the OTR exam. It covers evidence, safety, compliance, and professional responsibilities.

• Appraise evidence for practice. Review quality improvement and the health needs of populations.

• Manage safety risks. Review infection control, emergency response, prevention of harm, and professional burnout.

• Follow regulations and reimbursement requirements. Understand professional accountability.

• Maintain professional competency through development activities. Apply ethical standards to practice decisions.

Give Select and Manage Interventions the largest initial share of study time because it accounts for 38% of the OTR exam. Keep time for every domain, including Competency and Practice Management at 16%.

After practice questions, add review time for the tasks you miss. For each missed item, identify the domain and the decision you need to understand. Use the task bullets as a study checklist.