Locus of Control

    As an occupational therapy student and future practitioner, understanding your locus of control can play a vital role to your performance and success as well as our clients. According to Rosario Uranda, locus is defined as a position, point, place, or a location where something occurs, and control is defined as the power to determine outcomes by directly influencing actions, people, or events (Uranda, 2014). People who base their success on their own work and believe they control their life are considered to have an internal locus of control (Uranda, 2014). People who attribute their success of failure to outside influences are considered to have an external locus of control (Uranda, 2014). Individuals who have an internal locus of control are typically driven, hard on themselves and work for their own success. Individuals who have an external locus of control typically blame others for their actions and don’t take the personal responsibility for things happening in their lives.

    After completing the locus of control worksheet, my results showed I have a strong internal locus of control. As I would definitely agree with these results, I do think some things happen by fate or luck. There are some things that have happened in my life that I have thought to myself “wow I got lucky with that one”. But on the other hand, I have many characteristics of an individual with an internal locus of control. I consider myself a very driven hard worker, and I would also consider my success thus far in life contributes to the hard work I have completed to get here. I think my success is much more based off of my actions rather than "fate or luck".

    I believe it is extremely important to recognize and understand what type of locus of control each of the clients I work with have. Someone with internal locus of control will most likely be internally motivated, work harder, and be harder on themselves to recover quicker. Someone with external locus of control may need to extra motivation, and additional time and education as to what they need to do themselves to get better. As a future occupational therapy practitioner, I think it is important to encourage and teach ways to have an internal locus of control in hopes for better client outcomes. 

Meira, E. (2015, May 28). Are your patients out of control? The Science PT. https://thesciencept.com/are-your-patients-out-of-control/

Rosario Uranda. (2013, May 30). Locus of control definition and examples of internal and external. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF6mRWSiwhY&t=345s