Occupational therapists help get patients back on track

Tag: Infant Socks

HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS ACROSS THE NATION use April to spotlight occupational therapy. Many people are unaware of what occupational therapy, as a profession, actually does, and most are misinformed on the profession because of the broad scope of practice and many contributions occupational therapist make in health care.

Occupational therapists often find themselves struggling in pursuit of increasing awareness - not only in educating family and friends but also other health care professionals, who are often misguided by the profession's title. Occupational therapists work in a variety of settings: hospitals, home health, skilled nursing facilities, schools, outpatient clinics, community settings and inpatient rehabs.

Contrary to popular belief, OT is not a therapy aiming to assist persons in finding jobs or solely focused on getting people back to work. The focus is much broader in treating plans pertaining to identifying, analyzing, interpreting and implementing a plan of recovery through compensation or adaptation in activities of daily living, which pertains to everything that makes a person independent.

An OT's job is to assess a person's routines and patterns in their individualized daily routines to address deficits affecting their normal function and independence. This often affects a person at work and play or in education and leisure activities upon facing conditions, injuries and illnesses that force people to face challenges that affect how one performs a daily task that once seemed second-nature.

To see the importance, see the job in these potential patient scenarios:

# A car wreck victim has experienced a spinal cord injury and can no longer feed herself or care for her infant child independently.

# A kindergarten student has difficulty performing his handwriting and scissor-cutting tasks because of poor fine motor control.

# A man receives a hand injury while using a skill saw on the job. The injury has caused damage to his nerves and requires splinting and hand exercises to improve hand functions to return to work and continue playing his guitar with his weekend band.

# An elderly woman recovers from hip replacement and can no longer perform the task of putting on her socks and shoes.

These are all common types of disorders that occupational therapists treat in order to assist people in regaining a more confident and independent self so they can return to a functionally independent lifestyle.

Occupational therapy was named in the U.S. News and World Report 2008 Top 31 Best Careers in addition to being named in the 2007 U.S. News and World Report Top 25 Best Careers. For more information regarding the field, visit the American Occupational Therapy Association at www.aota.org.