Introduction to Occupational Therapy: Roles, Responsibilities, and Core Skills

Running Head: INTRODUCTION TO OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY
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Introduction to Occupational Therapy
Student’s Name
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INTRODUCTION TO OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY
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Contents
PART 1............................................................................................................................................2
Introduction..................................................................................................................................2
A unique role of an Occupational Therapist................................................................................2
Responsibilities of an occupational therapist...............................................................................3
The core skills of an occupational therapist.................................................................................4
Occupational therapy process, and the differentiation between occupational therapist and the
other social and health care professionals....................................................................................5
PART 2............................................................................................................................................7
Components of occupational therapy process..............................................................................7
Occupational therapists use the occupational therapy process to guide their practice................8
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION TO OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY
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PART 1
Introduction
Occupations involve many activities and tasks of daily routine life of an individual which include
self-care, enjoying life, contributing to the social and economic factors of society and other daily
life routine activities. It states about the influence on the health and well-being in relation to
occupational therapy, initially it focuses on the individual to identify the key aspects of his
health, and well-being, and then emphasizes occupational therapy and assess the impact on
health and well-being of occupational therapy (Turner, 2015). It aims to provide a better
treatment to client by understanding the client lifestyle which is a responsibility of an
occupational therapist. Occupation includes growth and development by engaging people in
mutual work which helps them to get promoted and also provide possibilities to maintain a
healthy environment to work together (Peters, 2013). It has been a famous saying by Meyer that,
“whatever the situation is whether it is happy or difficult the four things that our organism must
be able to do are work, play, rest, and sleep”. Occupational balance is an important concept of
occupational therapy. Occupational therapy helps people to overcome and recover from their
daily life stress and maintain their routine (Wagman, Håkansson, and Jonsson, 2014).
A unique role of an Occupational Therapist
An Occupational therapist helps children and adults of all ages for their daily life tasks and
occupation, affected with their mental, social, physical, or learning disabilities to develop
confidence and learn to live independently (Wilcock, 2015).

INTRODUCTION TO OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY
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Responsibilities of an occupational therapist
Working with a varied range of folks with different requirements, it’s really important to
understand people’s lifestyle to make the best therapy plan for them (Peters, 2013).
1. For considering the needs of a patient or client such as physical, mental, social or
environmental, it is important to focus on the “whole person” approach.
2. Plan, assess, implement and evaluate treatment in the hospital.
3. For the meaningful results towards creating realistic goals.
4. Communicate with other experts, such as consultants, doctors, social workers, equipment
suppliers, and physiotherapists as well as patient’s relatives and support members.
5. Keep the information updated on paper and digital records
6. For making the plan and reviewing ongoing treatments it is important to write a report
and take a part in multidisciplinary cases and meeting.
7. In case of emergency needs, referring patients to others experts or specialist.
8. Clinical services evaluation and contribution to the planning, analysis, audit, and
development.
9. Supervising the work of assistants of an occupational therapist and providing training to
students.
The activities would be different for the case of mental illness or disability (Wilcock, 2015).
1. For restoring the confidence and lost skills, and developing a restoration program.
2. Advising for both the environment, i.e. home and workplace such as adjustments
3. Teach anxiety management techniques