Joe's OT blog

The OTPF is the bible or Merriam Webster's dictionary for the field of occupational therapy. It describes everything almost like a direction manual. It talks about what is an occupation, what goes into occupational performance, our performance skills, our performance patterns, client factors and many more aspects. If someone wanted to know every little aspect about occupational therapy I would tell them to read the OTPF as it outlines the entire framework of occupational therapy. It lays down the foundation, guides our scope of practice and expresses the main goals of what our job will be as future therapists. It is a great resource to always have with you if you are in need of clarity on a specific question about occupational therapy.

I have always been a war world II history buff. Starting out as a freshman in college I thought I would major in history until I found out there was a lot more to history than just the interesting events like War World II. Today in our foundations class, we did projects on the specific decades and how occupational therapy grew during that decade. I thought everyone did a great job but in particular due to my interest in War World II, I found the 1940s to be very interesting. In all the classes teaching us about the war, I never knew how big a role occupational therapy played. With millions of people needing care, the need for occupational therapists in military hospitals increased dramatically. During this time the therapists helped the soldiers with rehabilitation so they could return to the line of duty. From here it was very cool to see how occupational therapy has grown from only having 21 programs in the 1940s to over 400 hundred in 2018. The growth has been tremendous and it is r

February 1, 2018 It is very interesting learning about all the different specialty certifications available to occupational therapists. One that excites me and one day I would like to pursue is a certification in advanced seating and mobility. My grandmother was in a wheel chair for basically her whole life, so being able to help individuals in wheelchairs by providing them different types of strategies to make life easier would really be a wonderful opportunity for myself. It is hard to understand the struggles that they go through every day trying to live their life. Grocery shopping, bathing, driving, cooking are all activities that individuals in wheelchairs may struggle with. Hopefully in my time in OT school I will be able to learn more about advanced seating and mobility certification and teach those individuals different techniques to cope in life.