During my four years at University, I would struggle to give someone a straight answer when they asked me what I was studying. What is Occupational Therapy? I could rattle off several textbook responses such as, “Occupational Therapists use a whole person perspective to work with individuals, groups and communities to achieve optimal health and well being through participation in the occupations of life”- OT Australia, or “Occupational Therapy is the only profession that helps people across the lifespan to do the things they want and need to do through the therapeutic use of daily activities (occupations)”- American OT Association. The truth is that it is too hard to sum up what Occupational Therapy is in one sentence.
So I am going to try and break it down for you. Instead of focusing on your disability, your sore knee, or the way you walk, occupational therapists help you to identify the tasks or activities in your day that you are finding difficult, or you want to get better at. Right from the beginning it is a positive, can do approach. This is called a functional goal. You may have one, or you may have several. That’s OK. The occupational therapist will also help you to figure out which are the most important, so you can work towards them first. These goals are the centre of all assessment and intervention. So next the Occupational Therapist will find out the barriers that are stopping you achieving your goals. These could be personal limitations, or your environment is not set up in a way to support you, or you are trying to do the task or activity in a way that is not right for you. Once the barriers are identified the intervention focuses on rectifying this. So it might be by changing the way you do the task or activity, it might be adapting your environment with assistive technology (AT) or home modifications to suit you as an individual or it might be developing your personal skills.
I hope this has given you a greater insight into what Occupational Therapy is and how we might be able to help you. Or maybe it has left you with more questions. Feel free to comment or ask any questions that you may have here, or head over to Facebook to start a conversation.
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