What exactly does an occupational therapist do?
By providing client-centered strategies, occupational therapists optimise health and well-being for a variety of patients. Some of the ways in which an OT can allow patients to engage more fully in activities that are important to their everyday lives.
- Acting with seniors to enhance their quality of life
- Act with children with delays in growth and disabilities
- Act to ensure quick recovery for those injured in motor vehicle accidents
- Can help with ergonomic reviews at the workplace
What are some of the duties and responsibilities of an Occupational Therapist (OT)
This job generally requires the ability to do the following:
- Review patients’ medical history and asses their condition and needs
- Evaluate patients’ ability to do certain tasks
- Confer with physicians, patients and their families, nurses, therapists, social workers, and other members of a patient’s care team
- Develop a treatment plan for patients with specific goals and tasks that will help them meet those goals
- Guide patients to perform tasks to meet their goals
- Demonstrate exercises that can help patients better perform everyday tasks and relieve pain
- Evaluate a patient’s home or workplace and identify potential improvements based on their needs
What is the difference between occupational therapy and physical therapy?
differ.
PT focuses on restoring or improving movement, strength, and range of motion. OT aims to improve the motor skills you need to perform daily tasks.
According to the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists, Occupational Therapy (OT) is:
…a type of health care that helps to solve the problems that interfere with a person’s ability to do the things that are important to them.
The Description of Physiotherapy in Canada document from the Canadian Physiotherapy Association states that:
Physiotherapy is a primary care, autonomous, client-focused health profession dedicated to improving quality of life by: Promoting optimal mobility, physical activity and overall health and wellness; Improving and maintaining optimal functional independence and physical performance; Rehabilitating injury and the effects of disease or disability with therapeutic exercise programs and other interventions; and Educating and planning
maintenance and support
programs to prevent
re-occurrence, re-injury or
functional decline.
What is an example of occupational therapy?
College of Occupational Therapist Of Ontario provide some great examples
OTs work with people of all ages – infants to seniors – in many different ways. Here are a few examples:
- Working with children and teachers in a classroom to help children develop skills such as handwriting or computer use or to provide strategies to manage behaviours – skills that will make it easier for students to learn and thrive in school.
- Working with patients admitted to hospital following a stroke or brain injury to assess and treat cognitive impairment – problems with the ability to think, remember or communicate – to help patients recover from or manage issues related to their condition.
- Working with clients with mental illness in outpatient programs, to assist people living with schizophrenia or bipolar disorders to manage their conditions so they can live independently at home in the community.
- Working with clients to identify and purchase equipment, such as wheelchairs or bathroom safety devices, to ensure clients can safely return to or remain at home when their physical abilities have changed as a result of a condition such as multiple sclerosis or arthritis.
- Working with clients following a workplace or motor vehicle injury to determine what the client may need in the future to be able perform their daily activities.
- Working with clients, who have experienced a change in their physical or mental abilities, to return to work by adapting how they do their job, what type of job they do or making changes to the workplace environment.