April is Occupational Therapy Month – 2016

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April is occupational therapy month! Occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants are part of a vital profession that helps people across the lifespan participate in the things they want and need to do through the therapeutic use of everyday activities. Occupational therapy services help patients regain functional mobility and relearn everyday physical skills that were lost due to physical, psychological, or developmental disabilities. An occupational therapy job focuses on the activities of daily living. OTs take great care in evaluating a resident to determine how that person’s cognitive and functional abilities, limb movements, coordination, mobility, fine motor skills, balance and vision affect his or her ability to perform tasks.

This April 2016 the occupational therapy month theme is, Occupational Therapy: Solutions to the Challenges of Everyday Life. There are many ways in which you can promote occupational therapy month. Social media and the internet make it pretty easy to promote OT month. Here is a list of 10 things you can do online to promote the month:

1. Share information about occupational therapy on social media sites
2. When you share this information on social media, use the hashtag #OTMonth
3. Take and share pictures of OT in action
4. Write a blog post (like this one) about occupational therapy
5. Create a video about OT
6. Record a podcast
7. Answer questions on Quora
8. Contact your legislators
9. Pin, re-pin, and like posts about occupational therapy on Pinterest
10. Relay a story about OT on Storify

Occupational therapy is the only profession that helps people across the lifespan to do the things they want and need to do through the therapeutic use of daily activities (occupations). Occupational therapy practitioners enable people of all ages to live life to its fullest by helping them promote health, and prevent—or live better with—injury, illness, or disability.

Common occupational therapy interventions include helping children with disabilities to participate fully in school and social situations, helping people recovering from injury to regain skills, and providing supports for older adults experiencing physical and cognitive changes. Occupational therapy services typically include:

• an individualized evaluation, during which the client/family and occupational therapist determine the person’s goals,
• customized intervention to improve the person’s ability to perform daily activities and reach the goals, and
• an outcomes evaluation to ensure that the goals are being met and/or make changes to the intervention plan.

Occupational therapy practitioners have a holistic perspective, in which the focus is on adapting the environment and/or task to fit the person, and the person is an integral part of the therapy team. It is an evidence-based practice deeply rooted in science.

How do you plan on celebrating occupational therapy month? Let us know in the comments section below.