Occupational therapy is just commonsense isn’t it?

NO NO No!!!

I don’t know how many times I have heard an occupational therapist or an occupational therapy student say “its just commonsense” when someone comments on something that has been suggested or recommended by the occupational therapist. After all doesn’t everyone know how to set goals, how to use a problem solving process or know that being well occupied contributes to self worth and self identity?

No !! If it was that easy everyone would just do it. Yes some but not all people do know about theses things but many struggle with how to bring them about . In the case of goal setting knowing how to not only set an achievable goal but to break it down to achievable steps to, work out how to remain focused on the goal, to learn how to plan for and scale any barriers that may be in the way and to celebrate the successes especially when one is coping with change, injury, disbility, illness or changed circumstance is difficult.

It’s definitely not just commonsense rather skilled artistry on the behalf of the therapist in getting alongside the person and making the difficult seem achievable.  Just as being well occupied, engaging in a range of satisfying occupations can require careful consideration of the environment, the person and the occupation/task or activity  by the therapist in order to bring it about successfully enabling the  person to experience meaningful engagement and the feelings of wellbeing that go with it.

The good bit (and sometimes the hard bit) is if we are good at what we do many don’t notice the intervention it just worked -they did it and slowly the skill of goal setting, problem solving, and the ability to bring about being well occupied moves from being facilitated by the occupational therapist  to being within the clients arsonal of skill to use as and when needed and so it begins to becomes the every day, and as that happens the illusion of commonsense develops.

I am not saying others can’t bring these things about however an occupational therapists ability to manipulate context rather than the person is a pretty unique skill.

The dictionary says commonsense is: “good sense and sound judgement in practical matters” so perhaps occupational therapy is commonsense – but perhaps commonsense isn’t all that common? Perhaps occupational therapists amongst other things are builders of commonsense?

Here ends my first rant and first blog for ages…

So visitors to this blog – Is occupational therapy just commonsense?

Calling occupational therapists – What’s OT?

OT , BT3.

ALO, KOT,POT,FI, FW1,CH,ALT,ROP,HOT,SAOT

How would you feel if I told you you would be doing all of these next week? Would you feel anxious?, wonder what you should wear?, whether you should eat before you did them?

Well I guess there is about 100 people in the world who will understand all that I have just written, and at least 260,000 who will understand the first OT. From memory that is, the number of occupational therapists in the world, according to the World Federation of Occupational Therapists recent stock take on occupational therapy.  Given that we ponder/discuss and constantly work on how to get our profession better recognised by others why do we persist in saying and writing OT?

I remember as a student, another student telling the story of an elderly client who had wanted something and had been told to talk to the OT. She was heard asking around the ward for the Old Tea Lady (true!!!!)

Today I got a call from my extended family, as per my last post I currently have a family member in hospital and he has now moved to rehabilitation, and fantastically they have put a list on the wall of his rehabilitation team. Today the question from the family was what does SW stand for, what about SLT and PT and is OT occupational therapy ? I know that one day they will know what all of these stand for but wouldn’t it be nice if they knew from the word go. For those that don’t know SW is social worker, SLT is speech language therapist, PT is physiotherapist and yes OT is occupational therapy.

We have a beautiful name, that describes our core beleif why don’t we use it? I know we have to explain occupation to others but we are half way there if people start with knowing the name of our profession. So lets stop the jargon and abbreviations as one of the most proactive steps we can take to having people know and understand our profession.

Top Occupational Therapy Blogs

The number of good occupational therapy blogs is growing. I thought it was time I shared with you some of my favourites. So first up is:

June 15th

Skills for healthy living: A resource blog for health providers this is a fantastic blog to learn about chronic pain, and to develop understandings about and skills in working with clients with chronic pain. Written by an occupational therapist it’s a great way to upgrade on this specialist area. And as a bonus it also has some fabulous photo’s.

16th June – No. 2 (please note these are currently not being ranked they are just coming in the order I think about them)

Thriving in School this blog is from Hosmer Road School in the US. Funny thing is until I went back in to write this I had always thought Hosmer Road School was in the UK!! – So sorry Beth. This blog is full of practical hands on tips and ideas for therapists working with children. I think part of my love of this blog is that it takes me back to my days of being a Paediatric Occupational Therapist. But with over 17,000 visits to this blog since January 2007 it must be one of the busiest Occupational Therapy Blogs IN THE WORLD.

17th June No. 3

OT Students (B)E(LO)N(G) You have to give it to Karen she wins hands down for being the most prolific occupational therapy blogger. She’s a student in her SECOND YEAR of training. It is a blog with an interesting mix of: how my day has been from the exciting to the dreary (did I really need to know she has just done the laundry!), glimpses into what being an OT student in the US is like, thinking associated with her ongoing learning, insights into working with clients and how applying her training goes. But overall what comes through is a huge motivation and commitment to becoming the best therapists she can. I find myself just having to go see what she is up to.

June 25th – No. 4

Advance OT This next blog is an outside somewhat surprising entry in my best blogs (even to me) as it is a trade publication. What I like about this blog is that it reports on what is happening in the American Association of Occupational Therapy. I think blogs like this are a great way of ensuring the everyday happenings and events of professional bodies are visible to all and able to be discussed. I’d love to see the New Zealand Association of Occupational Therapists with a blog and blogger. It’s a great way of getting up to date information to members and to enable non members to see the benefits of the Association. So how about it NZAOT?

Are we busier?

Today has been one of those days when you feel that there is not enough hours in the day to do all the things that need to get done. By the time one attends the meetings, and attends to the emails (in this instant world everyone expects an email reply pronto), there seems little other time left in the standard work day.

So what was today like:

The morning was full of meetings and email – when I look back now the meetings were actually very productive, and I did manage to get most of the emails responded to although the ‘a response needed file’ in the emails grew somewhat.

At lunch time we celebrated one of our staff members going off to the Masters World Games and I found myself saying to the staff member who had arranged the celebration – it’s great to be celebrating, but sadly sometimes in today’s busy world we need to ensure that we have plenty of people around who remind us to celebrate.

After lunch things went backwards I did manage to deal with one meeting on the phone rather than a face to face meeting freeing some time. But it was one of those afternoons where the technology and I were definitely not in sych, the computer was having a go slow day, I couldn’t get the library data bases to workfrom my computer – all I wanted was one article!, then I couldn’t figure out how to cut and paste some info into a table I was trying to complete (the usual methods didn’t work) etc etc.

But I think the biggest frustration of the day was that feeling that no matter how quickly I was working there were things I just wasn’t getting to, the lecture I have to write and give on Monday, the proposal due tomorrow, the timelines that need to be written and implemented for some key activities we have planned, a second proposal due next week, the monthly reporting etc.

So today’s questions are how do we work smarter?? and how do we look after ourselves to ensure work/life/ balance. As an occupational therapist I see that it is important to live it was well as talk it. So watch this space – I’m not sure of the answers but something is going to chance.

Freerice

Tonight I decided that it has been a while since I visited some of the Occupational Therapy Blogs that are out there. One of the first I found when I was first starting to blog was Hosmer School it always has an interesting range of postings. They don’t get a lot of comments but they certainly get a lot of visits. Tonight when I went on they had a link to Freerice. A site where you test your vocabulary and for every word you can define (through multichoice questions) you are donating 20 grains of rice to the United Nations world food programme to help end hunger. They state:

“FreeRice has two goals:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site”.

They point out and again I quote from the site that:

“Learning new vocabulary has tremendous benefits. It can help you:

• Formulate your ideas better
• Write better papers, emails and business letters
• Speak more precisely and persuasively
• Comprehend more of what you read
• Read faster because you comprehend better
• Get better grades in high school, college and graduate school
• Score higher on tests like the SAT, GRE, LSAT and GMAT
• Perform better at job interviews and conferences
• Sell yourself, your services, and your products better
• Be more effective and successful at your job

After you have done FreeRice for a couple of days, you may notice an odd phenomenon. Words that you have never consciously used before will begin to pop into your head while you are speaking or writing. You will feel yourself using and knowing more words”

To find out more and to put your vocabularly to the test
visit Freerice

It certainly enhanced my vocab more than Gordon Ramsey was doing on the TV.

It’s March…already!

I can’t believe that we have got to March and I haven’t posted a post. It has been a busy few months. First there was the holiday which recharged the batteries. Then I shifted house – everyone asks where to and I have to confess to five doors down on the other side of the road! (clearly I like the area). Like like a lot of house shifts there has been work to be done – gardening, wallpaper striping (I couldn’t live with lime green wallpaper) and things to get repaired. Then work was busy getting ready for our students to start the new year. In between the New Zealand Association of Occupational Therapists said they would audit educators in their Continuing Competence Framework for Recertification and so I needed to ensure everything was up to date in terms of my objectives and actions for the year. I think I am just on ready to start posting again so watch this spot.

Happy Christmas

It is hard to believe that it is almost Christmas. It seems to have been a very busy lead up to the festive season. Having had a few Christmas’s in the Northern Hemisphere I am always struck by the differences that having christmas in a different season makes. Here in New Zealand it’s summer (mind you wouldn’t know it today) and so Christmas is about being outdoors rather than congregating indoors.

Hoping you all have a happy christmas season full of opportunities to catch up with family and friends and hoping you are all back into blogging in the new year.

Jackie

Harry’s finally made it !!

Sometime ago I was talking about mastering technology and had to confess that I couldn’t figure out how to get my photo’s from the camera to my blog, and that if you ever saw Harry (the cat) you would know I had finally sorted the problem. I have been reduced to bribing Merrolee (Occupational Therapy Education Issues) with a glass of wine and a browse and borrow from my book shelf in exchange for some “looking over the shoulder” learning – and hey it’s sorted. However now I am on a roll and in the belief that the only way to cement my knowledge is to practice I have changed all the photo’s on the blog to photo’s I have taken this winter. I have left the Banner but perhaps one day it too will change. When it all comes together technology is a wonderful thing.

Jackie