Areas of Practice for Occupational Therapists

Before we started the Occupational Therapy program at Touro College non of us bloggers really knew how expanisive the field of OT truly is! A few areas of practice include:
-Pediatrics- Schools, Community, inpatient hospital based child OT, Early Intervention, Sensory Gym
-Acute Care Hospitals-  Acute care is an inpatient hospital setting for persons with serious medical conditions
-Inpatient rehabilitation, outpatient rehab or skilled nursing home facilities (AKA nursing home), assisted living facilites
-Mental Health- Inpatient lock units, clubhouse setting, Outpatient Program, Community Groups
-Home Health: OTs who work in this area usually work with client’s in the geriatric population
-OT's may work for home health agencies, rehab agencies, or a private practice.
-Work hardening-enables those with physical, psychological, and psychosocial issues inhibiting a person’s ability, to successfully return to work.
-Work conditioning(similar to work hardening), yet involves improving physical capacities, whereas work hardening improves physical, psychological, and psychosocial factors.
-Hand Therapy- making splints, providing exercises
-Hippotherapy (with horses)
-Aquatic Therapy

The list goes on and on--feel free to add!!

OT's VS PT's

A common misconception is that OT's simply work with the upper extremity (upper body) and PT's work with the lower extremity (lower body) (and by the way we too were amongst those who believed this). This is an untrue phenomenon and unfortunately many people who work outside of the healthcare profession believe this to be true.
In a typical rehab setting where there are both OT's and PT's working simultaneously on a patient it is definitely true that an OT will focus more on the upper extremity and the PT will focus more on the lower extremity. But in reality PTs, generally, are responsible for assisting patients with issues related to mobility (i.e. balance, lower extremity strength/range of motion, safety awareness), whereas OTs, generally speaking, are responsible for assisting patients with activities of daily living (i.e. dressing, bathing, grooming, upper extremity range of motion, household activities).

SO WHAT DOES AN OT DO??????

An occupational therapist is NOT to help people find jobs. OT's help people engage and participate in occupations of daily life that are both purposeful and meaningful to them. There are eight basic categories of occupation: Basic Activities of Daily Living (grooming, dressing, bathing...), Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (money management, shopping), Education, Work, Play, Leisure, Rest and Sleep, and Social Participation. All these basic occupations require certain skills that are termed Performance Skills to be able to engage in them successfully.
Thus our overall goal as Occupational Therapists is when there is a person with a certain disfunction, impairment or any deficit causing limitation in these "performance skills"we want to move them back to their prior level of function so they can be able to engage in these occupations once again. We want to maintain their optimal quality of life in order to provide them with the most independance possible. OT's do this through the use of various actvities which we will elaborate on in our next blog so stayyyy tuned!!!

What is Occupational Therapy??

We are in our last year of Occupational Therapy school. On numerous occasions we have been asked to describe what exactly we have been learning about for the last three years. "What's the difference between OT's and PT's?!" "Do you help people find jobs?!" "What else do OT's do besides handwriting?!" These are often the questions that we are faced with. All this has made us recognize the need to expand the knowledge of our future profession to "outsiders." We have decided that a blog would be an excellent way to provide this information to others. Additionally we hope that other Occupational Therapy students and Occupational therapists will read our blog to discuss various fieldwork placements that they have been at, to comment on the experiences they have had, providing essential tools that students may need to have a successful experience and lastly to offer treatment interventions that they have utilized and have proven to be beneficial.
Each week we will ask a new question, offer our own insights and we hope that others will follow and provide their own perspective on the proposed topic.