Hi Ellen!
I cannot agree with you more when you said that occupational therapy is a very rewarding career. Although I do not have much to share yet about the actual practice as I am still halfway through my sophomore year, let me at least share with you my fieldwork experience last year.
The pediatrics clinic that I was assigned to caters occupational therapy services to mostly school-age children and only very few adults. The occupational therapists evaluate and treat children from 2 to 3 months up to 10 years of age with a variety of diagnoses including autism related disorders, ADD/ADHD, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and delays in fine motor and visual motor skills which directly affect their academic performance. The OT's there help children gain independence and promote development of fine motor, sensory motor, and visual motor skills that children need to function and socialize in their community environments especially school. Aside from direct client care, I also learned that they also do school visits and home health support.
As their clients are mostly school-age children, the specific long-term goal of occupational therapists in the clinic is to write/improve the written communication skills [of clients] for greater proficiency when using writing implements and/or a keyboard. They make use of pre-reading, pre-writing, and pre-math activities as part of the treatment and design other individual and group programs and activities to enhance a childās independence through self-care like feeding and dressing, play and leisure activities, hand strengthening and coordination activities as well as neurodevelopmental techniques for children with cerebral palsy.
Through directly observing how an occupational therapy practitioner works, I became fully aware of the various important roles we play in the clinic setting and thus better appreciate occupational therapy as a profession. My drive to continue taking this career path grew because of this experience, for it made me realize how rewarding practicing the profession can be someday.
esc501 wroteEveryone I have spoken to who works as an occupational therapist has told me how much they have enjoyed their work and found it a really rewarding career. I suppose that would make sense giving that they are all people who have chosen to stay in the profession, but it is encouraging! :-)
From a personal point of view occupational therapy has made me think more about why I do the things I do and what they mean to me. I think about things from another point of view (an occupational one), which I didn't perhaps so much before. I really like how we are definitely helping people too. I have occupations that are so important to me. When I think about doing a job that helps other people to do things that are important to them I think, well what a brilliant job!! I'm sure the practicalities of work and organisations etc make it challenging e.g. limited resources. But the premise of the job is one I really buy in to and that's why I wanted to do it. Definitely making a positive difference to people's lives, whatever area of occupational therapy we are working in.
I'd be interested to hear other people's stories about specific things they have encountered. I'm sure there's a lot of inspiring stuff out there :-)
