Background And Personal Interest Of Occupational Therapy

Ever since I was a child, people always asked me what I would like to be when I grew up. At first, I would always say that I wanted to become an engineer because of my love for hands-on learning and my exceptional problem-solving skills. However, when I grew older I found that similar spark of fascination in the medical field. I wanted to go into a profession where I could help others and use my love for problem solving and hands-on interest. This is when I became interested in occupational therapy and fell in love with the profession. Occupational therapy has several elements I find passion in such as, the ability to be hands on and help change other people’s lives in a positive manner. My goal in life is to become an occupational therapist and help others live independent lives again. As I work to obtain this goal, I am doing many things such as strengthening my writing skills because this major involves many various aspects of writing. To succeed in this field, one needs to be able to write strong research-based papers and cite all sources correctly. I am striving to master these skills in hopes that I can succeed in and accomplish my academic goals.

Growing up, I have been an individual who has pushed myself beyond the minimum requirements in order to succeed. In high school I excelled in both academics and athletics. I graduated in the top 10% of my class and lettered in hockey and tennis my sophomore, junior, and senior year. I worked hard and put in extra time in order to set myself apart from others. Succeeding in both school and athletics made me a responsible, reliable, and an organized individual. These experiences made me a versatile individual and have given me a work ethic that has benefited me with my academics in college and with my work and volunteer experiences.

Occupational Therapist enables people to engage and participate in everyday activities trough occupation. The latter role is not only applicable for individuals but also groups or populations. Eventually, with the increase of the aging population, expensive health care services, occupational therapists will have to incorporate health promotion practices into their actual roles.To cope with this phenomenon and to better meet older adult’s needs, the occupational therapist 's role would benefit from being enlarged.Expanding their knowledge and their practices in promoting health will facilitate their work in other domains.This will help them to shift from an individual to a population approach. To achieve that transition, therapists should be more involved in decisions taken by politicians regarding health and to develop services and programs that promote well-being, health, and quality of life. Also, collaboration with other fields such as schools, workplaces, industries, deputies and organizations will help them spread strategies that promote awareness and enable the population to control and maintain an independent healthy lifestyle. Also, therapists understand that the environment can be a crucial factor on health population. Therefore ,they can put pressure on the government to make public places more accessible to disabled people such as providing the subway of a wheelchair ramp and adapt crosswalks to the blind by adding pedestrian signals that include speakers at

The concepts and principles in the Founding Vision of 1917 and the Centennial Vision of 2007 establish a connection between our past and present. Comparing the two Visions shows that many of our modern day values were first outlined by occupational therapy’s founders a century ago. The Founding Vision reads, “The particular objects for which the corporation is formed are as follows: The advancement of occupation as a therapeutic measure; for the study of the effect of occupation upon the human being; and for the scientific dispensation of this knowledge” (National Society for the Promotion of Occupational Therapy [NSPOT], 1917). Where the Centennial Vision reads, “We envision that occupational therapy is a powerful, widely recognized, science-driven,

A job in any type of therapeutic healthcare can be a rewarding and satisfying job. However, I believe that occupational therapy is a special and extremely rewarding field. A field in which I am over the moon passionate about and completely infatuated with. It is the thought of helping people who have been through horrible tragedies to turn everything around and live a happy healthy life that drives me the most. I feel very strongly as though this profession is where I am meant to work in and make a difference in patient’s lives. The more I research topics and studies of occupational therapy the more infatuated with the field I become because it is much more than just a job. To me, this career is a lifestyle

What intrigues me most in the field of Occupational Therapy is that I could make a positive impact in the lives of others. An occupational therapist can help a patient revitalize their physical, cognitive, or emotional disabilities, and develop or restore its functionality through continuous practice and effort. There is nothing more fulfilling for me than to see an individual achieving the greatest possible independence. This train of thought arose when I observed an occupational therapist working with my mother to return her arm to feeling normal again after her accident.

Twenty years ago, I first heard of occupational therapy and fell in love with the idea. I knew from that moment that OT was my dream career, and I decided to pursue an education institutions the medical field to make my dream a reality.

An occupational therapist helps people who struggles to do their day to day activities. It can range from kids to elderly. They help kids to improve on their skills that they are developing like motor, physical, sensory, cognitive, and more. They also help elders who can't do their normal activities due to their conditions. It takes a lot of time and effort to become an occupational therapist. Their goal for the patient is to reach the patient’s goal and become more independent when it comes to their daily activities.

Occupational therapists help all ages improve their daily activities. This specific therapy helps rehabilitate people who need “specialized assistance to lead independent, productive, and satisfying lives due to physical, developmental, social, or emotional problems” (Ithaca College). The therapists create different exercises for each individual patient to help them develop their skills or learn how to decrease future injury.

When I first considered occupational therapy, I was a sophomore in college sitting in my advisors office upset because I had no clue what I was doing with my life. I knew I wanted to be part of the medical field but couldn’t narrow it down any further. I had signed up for classes required for medical school, thinking those would cover my bases as I figured out what I actually wanted to do. My advisor and I were discussing my passion for helping people find ways to improve their lives and be independent. She kept encouraging me to look into occupational therapy because she thought it would be perfect for me.

As a young child, I did not fully grasp why my uncle was confined to a wheelchair. Many years later, my parents informed me that he had an arteriovenous malformation removed from his pons that left him ataxic. With a two-year-old daughter and a son on the way, my uncle was told he might never walk again. When individuals are confronted with a physical or emotional challenge such as this, they may look to others for support in finding inner strength and self-fulfillment in their life. As a future occupational therapist, I look forward to helping individuals finding this inner strength to attain competence and independence in the occupations of life.

Occupational therapy combines my two loves the medical field and working with special needs children. While being employed in the school system as an occupational therapist, I will be interacting and working with many different people on a daily basis. We will all be considered part of the support staff and will work together to help the children achieve their goals. I will also be keeping the parents updated on a weekly basis of their child’s progress, along with attending each child’s IEP (individual education plan) conference. Becoming an occupational therapist is a very long and hard journey. During the process I will be taking many difficult classes, learning about numerous disabilities, taking lots of tests, learning how to use adaptive

It is a career that is designed for all the individuals that wants to make a change in a person’s life. While working with your client in achieving their independence, it’s important to treat the diagnosis and not the person. Occupational Therapy is the door that gives an opportunity for everyone to collaborate and discover the importance of hope for those who believes that their world has come to an end due to health problems or a disability. Being in this field allows you to learn something new every day as you communicate and performs therapeutic activity with your

Everyone is a novice at the beginning, the process to becoming an expert involves life long learning (Harris & Duncan, 2009). In relation to occupational therapy a new graduate is considered a novice. As a novice new graduates have skills in finding information they need and have a good grounding in current occupational therapy theories (Robertson, 2012). However a novice works with a high cognitive load which may challenge then working memory, resulting in errors (Ladyshewsky, 2009). Where a novice will be relying on procedural reasoning until experience is gained, an expert uses conditional reasoning which is a multidimensional process (Fleming, 1991; Robertson, 2012) To transition from novice to expert requires the new graduate to gain

I completely agree with you that Occupational Therapists (OT) can use therapeutic interventions and behavioral modifications to help with health promotion and disease prevention. One of the main goals of occupational therapy is to help clients engage and participate in occupations that are meaningful to them. OTs can help clients achieve this goal by focusing interventions on health promotion and disease prevention to help clients maintain a healthy lifestyle. While researching more information on how OTs can help with health promotion and disease prevention, I found this article, http://ajot.aota.org/article.aspx?articleid=1867125, by Scaffa, Van Slyke, and Brownson (2008). This article explains how occupational therapy services can influence