Occupational Therapy Helps People Get Back to Work
Occupations are the activities that people do every day to give their life meaning and purpose, and Occupational Therapy helps people get back back to work. The work they need and want to do.
When a person is injured at work, they may find themselves unable to perform certain daily activities or job duties as they were once able to. Occupational Therapy practitioners are experts at assisting in restoring and maximizing these functional capacities. They utilize activity analysis to identify barriers to participating in job-related tasks and provide adaptive strategies that utilize adaptive equipment and safe movement patterns training to ensure injury prevention during functional activities.
Activities similar to the client’s occupation are essential components of occupational therapy because performance patterns, performance skills, and client factors influence how they engage in their daily work.
Activities are the actions people perform on a daily basis. They differ from occupations because activities do not usually hold a great deal of personal meaning for clients. For example, a person may put on their shoes every day, but this activity may not hold a great deal of personal meaning or be central to how they see themselves in their jobs. However, occupational therapy practitioners design intervention plans that include simple daily activities to enhance engagement that could be meaningful to the client’s occupation. Activities are intentionally selected by the occupational therapy practitioner to facilitate the development of the client’s performance skills and performance patterns. They can’t go to work without their shoes, so if they master that, they can begin to see themselves going back to work.
Occupational therapy practitioners also address health management to help clients with chronic conditions maintain and improve performance. If a client is unable to manage a chronic condition, performance and participation in work, leisure, and social participation might be impaired.
Occupational therapy practitioners address different aspects of health management such as:
- Symptom and condition management
- Medication management
- Social and emotional health promotion and maintenance
- Communication with the healthcare system
- Personal device management
- Physical activity management
The goal of the Occupational Therapy program at Northwest Return to Work is to assist clients in maximizing their functional capacities, enabling them to participate as fully as possible in valued occupations and required job tasks.
Occupational Therapy might be the right program for you if:
- You have a recent or chronic bodily injury that impacts your daily function.
- You are not able to participate in meaningful or necessary activities without pain or limitation after an injury.
- You have made progress in Physical Therapy but still need strategies to help manage the tasks of daily life.