Dispelling Misconceptions About Occupational Therapy

With dramatic changes underway, it's not an easy time to be an occupational therapy student.

As an occupational therapy student, I feel that defining our profession and highlighting exactly what we do is important. Occupational therapy is a young, growing profession, and there are a lot of misconceptions about it. Some professionals have obvious roles; the doctor who performs life saving surgery, the nurse who provides indispensable after care. But many members of the multidisciplinary team stay in the background, working to improve the wellbeing of all members of society.

Definitions can be tricky, because like social workers, we work with a whole cross-section of society, in a myriad of different environments. So while we might help one person access paid work, we might help another manage anxiety through creative activity. Importantly, we don't set the occupational goals; our clients do.

We also tend not to shout about what we do. You shouldn't go into occupational therapy if you want to be recognised as the hero. The most skilled workers in these professions consider themselves facilitators, working solely to enable other people to achieve.

If someone finishes a therapeutic activity and thinks "hey, the therapist didn't even do anything. I just did it all myself!", then that person has had a very successful course of occupational therapy.

I know that social workers hold a similar philosophy, in that the more independence they can elicit from their clients, the more successful their intervention has been. Social workers don't want to be needed; they want to give people the skills and confidences that will enable them to manage their own affairs. So do we.

A common misconception about occupational therapists is that the contribution towards the recovery of a patient is not as important as that of medics, or psychological therapists. On the surface, a lot of occupational therapist interventions can appear simple.

The misunderstanding is that everyday activities are simple and easy to do. While this may be true most of the time, someone struggling with either their mental or physical health may have a very different experience of trying to bathe, cook or access public transport independently. Occupational therapists put great value on learning how to break down these activities, and make them accessible for everyone.

Like social work students, occupational therapists spend a lot of time on placements, gaining a taste for the challenges and rewards which await.

In my view, the more that different professionals learn about each other's roles, the better we can work as a team, and the better we can work for our clients.

(Source: Guardian.co.uk)