TL;DR: BS Occupational Therapy runs under CHED Memorandum Order No. 52, series of 2017: at least 156 units, with the final year level given over to 1,200 hours of fieldwork. Yes, there is a PRC board exam. Republic Act No. 11241, the Philippine Occupational Therapy Law of 2018, created a Professional Regulatory Board of Occupational Therapy and set the exam's three domains and its 75% passing mark. Passers use the initials OTRP.
Occupational therapy gets confused with physical therapy constantly, including by people already enrolled in one of them. The short version of the difference: physical therapy is largely about restoring movement and physical function; occupational therapy is about occupational performance — getting a person able to do the things they need or want to do, in the areas of self-care, work, play and leisure, either by treating the person or by modifying the task or the environment.
That distinction is now written into Philippine law. For fifty years the two professions shared a single regulatory board. In 2019 occupational therapy was given its own statute and its own board, and the curriculum had already been split off two years earlier. Here is what the current rules require.
What Governs BS Occupational Therapy
The programme runs under CHED Memorandum Order No. 52, series of 2017, "Policies, Standards and Guidelines for the Bachelor of Science in Occupational Therapy Education (BSOT) Program," adopted by virtue of Commission en Banc Resolution No. 231-2017 dated 28 March 2017.
The CMO describes BSOT as "at least a 156 units undergraduate degree program consisting of general education, basic sciences, clinical and professional courses," with the last year level given over to the fieldwork programme. Students are placed in affiliation centres that meet CHED's requirements for such placements.
As with other outcomes-based CHED orders, schools are given room to design their own courses so long as they hit the prescribed outcomes and minimums. What they cannot go below are the unit floor, the fieldwork hours, and the proportional split described next.
The Structure: Units, Proportions, Fieldwork
CMO 52 sets three headline minimums for the curriculum: Philippine Qualifications Framework Level 6, at least 156 units, and 1,200 fieldwork hours.
It also constrains the shape of the curriculum, which is unusual and worth noting: at least 55% of units must sit in OT professional courses, research and fieldwork, while basic and clinical courses must not exceed 25% of the total. In other words, CHED explicitly prevents a school from turning BSOT into a pre-med programme with some OT bolted on.
The prescribed minimum component units are:
| Component | Units |
|---|---|
| General education courses | 36 |
| Electives | 9 |
| National Service Training Program (NSTP) | 6 |
| Physical Education (PE) | 8 |
| Basic science courses (anatomy and kinesiology, physiology, neurosciences for OT) | 12 |
| Medical foundation courses (conditions in mental health, neurological rehabilitation, musculoskeletal and cardiopulmonary rehabilitation) | 9 |
| Professional courses, including OT core, OT clinical and research | 76 |
| Total | 156 |
Inside that 76-unit professional block, the CMO allots 6 units to OT core courses (professional development and OT ethics; OT leadership and management), 61 units to OT clinical courses, and 9 units to research. Fieldwork alone accounts for 26 of the clinical units — the single largest course in the degree.
The clinical courses named in the order track the profession's main practice areas: foundations for OT, development of human occupations, OT and mental health, OT and neurological rehabilitation, OT and musculoskeletal and cardiopulmonary rehabilitation, and OT and community-based health and rehabilitation.
Fieldwork Is the Fourth Year
Under CMO 52 the last year level is the fieldwork programme. That is a meaningful difference from degrees where internship is a course tacked onto a normal final year. For twelve months you are in placements rather than lecture halls, accumulating the 1,200 hours the CMO requires.
When comparing schools, this is the thing to ask about specifically: which affiliation centres they use, whether placements cover paediatric, adult physical, psychosocial and community settings, and how students are supervised. The CMO fixes the hours; it cannot fix the quality of the sites, and that varies.
Is There a Board Exam? Yes
Republic Act No. 11241, "The Philippine Occupational Therapy Law of 2018," approved 11 March 2019, created a Board of Occupational Therapy under the Professional Regulation Commission and made the licensure examination compulsory. Section 26 of that law prohibits practising, offering to practise, or calling yourself an occupational therapist without passing the exam.
Who can sit it. Under Section 13, an applicant must be a Filipino citizen (or a foreigner from a country with a reciprocity agreement), must not have been convicted of an offence involving moral turpitude, and must be a graduate of a BS Occupational Therapy degree — or its equivalent as determined by the Board — from a school whose OT programme is recognised by CHED.
What it covers. Section 14 groups the coverage into three domains, over basic sciences and health science foundations:
- Occupational Therapy Application 1 — OT theories and frames of reference; growth and human development; occupational performance and behaviour across the lifespan; occupation-based practice
- Occupational Therapy Application 2 — adult physical dysfunction; OT in paediatrics; OT in geriatrics; psychosocial dysfunction; community-based practice
- Occupational Therapy Application 3 — professional reasoning and behaviour; professional competence and ethics; organisation, administration and management; the research process
The Board may revise, add or reweight subjects with the Commission's approval, so treat the list as the statutory baseline rather than a fixed table of specifications.
What passing takes. A general average of 75%, with no grade lower than 60% in any given subject.
What you get. Successful examinees take a professional oath and are issued a certificate of registration and professional identification card. Section 18 provides for the initials OTRP — Occupational Therapists Registered Philippines — to follow the registrant's name on documents relating to practice.
For filing mechanics that apply across PRC exams, see our PRC board exam requirements guide. PRC sets fees and dates per cycle; confirm them on prc.gov.ph rather than from a secondary page.
How OT Split From PT
Republic Act No. 5680 (1969) created a single Board of Examiners for Physical Therapists and Occupational Therapists, and for decades both professions were examined under it. RA 11241 ended that arrangement for OT, and its transitory provision stated that the existing joint board would continue to function in the interim until the new, separate Board of Occupational Therapy was constituted.
Practically, this means older material about "the PT/OT board" is out of date for occupational therapy. If you are reading a review guide, a school brochure or a forum post that treats the two exams as one, it predates the split. Our BS Physical Therapy guide covers the other side, and the physical therapist licensure exam guide covers the PT exam specifically.
What Occupational Therapists Actually Do
CMO 52 lists the roles a graduate should be able to take on at entry level: general clinical practitioner; classroom or fieldwork educator; programme leader or manager of a practice; consumer of research; advocate for the profession and for OT practice; and community-based therapist.
The law's own description of the scope is broader than most people expect. Occupational therapists analyse and apply purposeful, meaningful activity directed at occupational performance in self-care, work, play and leisure, and on referral they intervene where problems impede functional or adaptive performance — with the aim of preventing limitations in participation.
In Philippine practice that puts OTs in hospitals and rehabilitation centres, in paediatric clinics, in mental health services, in community programmes, and in school settings supporting learners with additional needs. If that last area is what draws you, our guide to special education in the Philippines gives useful context on how those services are organised here.
CMO 52 also names the allied fields it considers adjacent: nursing, medicine, psychology and physical therapy. That matters if you are weighing a shift, because credit transfer between adjacent health programmes is decided school by school, not by CHED.
Before You Enrol
- Check the programme is CHED-recognised. RA 11241 requires a degree from a school whose OT programme is recognised by CHED for exam admission. A programme without that recognition is a licensure problem, not just a reputation problem. Start with our guide to CHED-accredited schools.
- Ask about affiliation centres by name and setting. The fieldwork year is a quarter of the degree.
- Ask about board performance across several cycles. OT cohorts are small; a single year's rate on a handful of examinees tells you almost nothing.
- Confirm tuition with the school. There is no national OT tuition figure in this article on purpose — schools set and revise their own rates, and a directory number would be stale for most readers by enrolment.
For a broader look at which programmes carry a licensure requirement, see courses with board exams.
Sources
- CHED Memorandum Order No. 52, series of 2017 — Policies, Standards and Guidelines for the Bachelor of Science in Occupational Therapy Education (BSOT) Program — Commission on Higher Education (unit totals, component breakdown, fieldwork hours, graduate roles, allied fields)
- Republic Act No. 11241 — The Philippine Occupational Therapy Law of 2018 — LawPhil / Arellano Law Foundation (board creation, exam qualifications and scope, passing rating, OTRP initials, transitory provision)
- Republic Act No. 5680 — An Act Creating the Board of Examiners for Physical Therapists and Occupational Therapists — LawPhil (the former joint board)
- Board of Physical and Occupational Therapy — Republic Act No. 5680 (PRC-hosted copy) — Professional Regulation Commission
