Occupational Therapy (OT) is a health profession that is commonly misunderstood by the general public because of its wide scope and vague terminology. Due to the broad range of skills in OT and its tendency to overlap with other professions, Occupational Therapists are commonly mistaken for other healthcare professionals such as Physiotherapists.
With blurred roles in the current healthcare landscape, the key to describing OT lies not in the practical skills of the profession, but in the profession’s perspective of function. While other professions focus on specific functional aspects such as mobility, speech, or recreation, Occupational Therapy is uniquely concerned with function as a whole and clients’ ability to fully engage in daily activities.
According to the Ontario Occupational Therapy Act (2017), “the practice of occupational therapy is the assessment of function and adaptive behaviour and the treatment and prevention of disorders which affect function or adaptive behaviour to develop, maintain, rehabilitate or augment function or adaptive behaviour in the areas of self-care, productivity and leisure.”
To put it simply, Occupational Therapists help people ‘do what they want or need to do‘.
This involves looking at all the potential factors that may affect a client’s ability to engage in daily activities including person, environment, and activity factors. This focus on complete engagement is the core of OT, and ultimately, what differentiates it from other allied health professions.
Reference
Occupational Therapy Act, 1991, S.O. 1991, c. 33