What is Occupational Therapy?

Now, OT is a funny profession! It’s the usual conversation with someone that I’ve just met – they’ve  asked “so what do you do” and I’ve given my reply, only to be met with a slight head tilt, a nod of the head, a vague smile, and an “ohh, that’s nice”. Or another common one is “oh can you sort my job out for me?!” Any OT’s out there that may be reading this know exactly what I mean! And what do I do in response? Normally I say something along the lines of “yeah, it’s pretty good, I’ve been doing it for a while now……..” before moving onto the usual social niceties. Why? Because when someone doesn’t know what OT is, it can be pretty hard to explain. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t always done that. When someone would assume my job was about their job (and why wouldn’t they, with the word occupation in the title?), I used to try and give them the right explanation. But then I stopped, and I don’t know why.

Now, OT is a funny profession! It’s the usual conversation with someone that I’ve just met – they’ve  asked “so what do you do” and I’ve given my reply, only to be met with a slight head tilt, a nod of the head, a vague smile, and an “ohh, that’s nice”. Or another common one is “oh can you sort my job out for me?!” Any OT’s out there that may be reading this know exactly what I mean! And what do I do in response? Normally I say something along the lines of “yeah, it’s pretty good, I’ve been doing it for a while now……..” before moving onto the usual social niceties. Why? Because when someone doesn’t know what OT is, it can be pretty hard to explain. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t always done that. When someone would assume my job was about their job (and why wouldn’t they, with the word occupation in the title?), I used to try and give them the right explanation. But then I stopped, and I don’t know why.

I’m not entirely convinced my family, partner, or some of my friends know what I do to be honest! That’s obviously not their fault – maybe I gave up trying to explain it somewhere along the way? Moving into independent practice has given me lots of food for thought, and a comment from a friend has sparked me writing this. When I told my friends about my thoughts of moving into private practice they were all really supportive. One of my friends then jokingly asked if there was much call for basket weaving in the private sector, swiftly followed by “on a serious note, what sort of work would it entail?”. I said what my plan was and that was that. But more recently, when I’ve been thinking about how I could start the resource section of my site I realised there is still so much that people don’t know about what OT’s can do, and figured that starting with a post about what OT is would be a good place to start!  

Going back to the basket weaving comment, OT’s did used to teach it, which is why it still gets referred to. It was used as a therapeutic activity to help with motor function, to give someone a sense of self esteem, and to help occupy people in mental health asylums. I don’t know of any OT’s that still actually do this, although with there being lots of focus on mindfulness and use of crafts to help improve your own mental health, who knows, maybe it will become a thing again! If anyone knows of any OT’s that are actually using basket weaving in their practice, then let me know!

In a nutshell, OT’s use occupation – meaning the things that we do – to help with function. It’s all those practical and purposeful activities that we do that makes us feel good and makes us who we are.  It’s the things we need and want to do. Sleeping, eating, getting out of bed, cooking, driving, working, reading, knitting, painting, gardening……they’re all occupations and some will be more meaningful than others for different people. As an OT I look at what it is that a person wants to be able to achieve – their goals – and I look at the things that are preventing them from being able to carry those things out. From there we can problem solve and try to work out how the person can start doing that thing again. That might be by suggesting an alternative way of doing the task that makes it easier for them, or introducing equipment that will help, or sometimes we might have to adapt the actual environment to allow them to achieve what they want, such as providing ramping to allow someone to safely leave their house so they can get out and about again. OT is hugely diverse. It’s actually one of the reasons why I decided to become an OT in the first place. And hopefully in time more and more people will realise what we do and how we can help.

If you’ve had any experience of OT then leave a comment and let me know – I’d love to hear it!