Occupational Therapy Assistant: A Case Study

A clinical situation that has taken place that has enabled me to incorporate the “Occupational Therapy Practice Framework Domain and Process (3rd Ed.)” (AOTA, 2014) into my approach was when an individual that has had a car accident during an ice storm. We will refer to this individual as Jane. She was a 55 year old housewife that was the primary caretaker of her husband who had suffered a stroke a few years ago. Jane took care of all the home management as well as transportation and health care needs for her husband. Jane was very active in her community as well as her family that lived several hours away.

Occupational therapy assistant is my dream career. They help people live a normal life again without any assistance of other people. The help people enhance, improve, develop, and recover the skills use for working or doing daily average tasks. OTA’s usually work under the direction of occupational therapists, and they still get involved with providing therapy for patients. According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, occupational therapy assistants help patients do therapeutic activities. For example, they help patients to stretch or do other exercises. OTA’s also help children who have developmental disabilities to play activities that helps stimulate coordination and learn to socialize. They teach disable people to use special equipment,

Throughout this course, my mind was opened to several healthcare careers which I was unaware of before. For the careers that I did know about, this course still did a great job at informing me of the professions on a deeper level. After reviewing the lectures and careers, I feel strongly about pursuing a career in Occupational Therapy. More specifically, I want to become an Occupational Therapy Assistant. This was a career that I had in mind when I began the course and I have been interested in it for about two years now. Occupational Therapy Assistants need to be sociable, compassionate, flexible, and enjoy problem solving. I believe I will enjoy this profession because my personality matches with all of these things.

OT and COTA collaboration: Both the registered occupational therapist (OT) and the certified occupational therapy assistant (COTA), should collaborate over the course of the client’s evaluation, treatment, and discharge. There is a hierarchy of supervision regarding an OT and a COTA, but nevertheless, both clinicians should have a professional team approach and partnership with the common core of serving the client. The team approach relationship should have sound partnership factors such as communication, trust, knowledge, and respect. Both clinicians would communicate clearly to one another of any client concerns, integration of activities within the intervention process, positive treatment outcomes, etc.

The Psychology Major’s Handbook by Tara L. Kuther gives a list of positions that Psychology majors can obtain with a bachelor’s degree. This list is helpful because only one-fourth of psychology majors go to graduate school immediately following graduation (Kuther, 2015, p. 170). Within this list, the occupation that caught my eye was that of an Occupational Therapist. Though one cannot be an Occupational Therapist with only a bachelor’s degree, one can be an Occupational Therapist Assistant (OTA) with a bachelor’s degree. With other training and licensure, an individual with a bachelor’s in psychology can work in the field of Occupational Therapy because psychology teaches one human service skills. Employers may not understand why a psychology major would be eligible for a job like Occupational Therapy; thus it is the responsibility of the applicant to explain their eligibility for the desired position (Kuther, 2015, p. 171).

social awareness and social skills (See appendix A). The OTS scored 31 on self-awareness. The

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

When I graduated from high school I originally planned on being an Athletic Trainer. After being accepted into not only Shenandoah University but the pre-admit AT program which is a three plus two program, I was going to graduate with a masters degree in five years. In my sophomore year at Shenandoah I realized that I did not want to be an Athletic Trainer. I began looking into what careers were out there that I could pursue with an Exercise Science degree. After talking my advisor, who was an athletic training for most of her career, she asked if I ever looked into Occupational Therapy. Once looking into the career I talked to my Aunt who worked in many fields as an Occupational Therapist and learning more about the career I was set on pursuing

In this case, although the error started from the transmission of the discharge note to the home health care agency, Physical Therapist and Physical Therapist Assistant made number of mistakes in terms of clinical practice and delegation. First of all, completion and accuracy of patient’s physical therapy record is a professional responsibility of a supervising Physical therapist.1(p4) However, the PT failed to read the hospital discharge referral and documented incomplete and inaccurate plan of care. As a result, important information such as un-cemented prosthesis in situ and weight bearing limitations were not documented. In addition to that PTA elected to follow a protocol for cemented hip arthroplasty without referring back to PT for the missing information in the assessment. According to Texas Board of Physical Therapy examiners rule, “PTA may not specify and/or perform definitive (decisive, conclusive, final) evaluative and assessment procedures.”1(p5) Hence, it was also a mistake of the PTA to conclude the assessment and elect the inappropriate plan of care.

I believe that my prior work and school related experiences allow me to stand out above other future occupational therapy assistants. I am currently in school obtaining a bachelor's degree in psychology. Throughout the past three years I have taken classes not only in the field of psychology but also anatomy and physiology, biology, and chemistry. I strongly believe that the time I spent while obtaining a bachelor's degree and focusing on healthcare classes will allow me to do exceptionally well in the occupational therapy field. Since I have taken many undergraduate classes while obtaining a psychology degree, I have taken many of the classes that are incorporated into the coursework at zane state, therefore I will have less classes to take

In the daily life of an Occupational Therapy assistant, it consists of the person actually being involved with the patient. It’s a lot of hands on, and it’s very challenging when it comes to your own body, because

The Occupational Therapy Assistant lab at University of Charleston is unavailable after normal business hours to complete tasks hands on and to work on homework effectively; with no computer lab available for additional knowledge on the subjects, OTA students of University of Charleston is at a hindrance, resulting in tasks being completed off campus. The OTA program is at an educational disadvantage because the main resources are limited to a Monday through Friday schedule, which entitles students to rely on unscholarly articles and websites for information.

Hard work and empathy were instilled in me at a young age and ultimately have guided my life decisions. I always knew I wanted a career doing something that involved helping people and left me feeling that I made a difference in their lives. I finished my undergraduate degree in Nutrition, but in the end lacked passion for the profession. Following a personal experience with an Occupational Therapist, I was able to see the positive outcome she had on my grandfathers recovery which lead me to pursue my career in occupational therapy.

Occupational therapy has been in the process of continued development since the 1900’s. With several contributors helping to build the groundwork for creating the awareness needed to bring occupational therapy into the field of health care. Continued research is contributing to the ongoing significance of how occupational therapy is a vital aspect in promoting increased independences in all aspects of healthcare. (Willard, Schell, 2014) With the incorporation of “Occupational Therapy Practice Framework Domain and Process (3rd ed.)” helps creates the foundation for occupational therapy clinicians as well as other health care providers in facilitating the core believe of occupational and the relationship of health and occupation. (AOTA 2014) Therefore, providing a uniform outline of the various aspects of each individual and how they are interconnected to create the foundation of each individual. With a greater understanding of the foundations of that induvial, the clinician can then facilitate the best therapeutic treatment plan for that individual to achieve their personal goals with unified foundations of care.

Vi would benefit from skilled occupational therapy services for post op rehabilitation of flexor tendon laceration of the wrist to improve overall independence with functional activities of daily living as well as identifying areas of interest in leisure activities to address Vi's underlying depression. Therefore the performance areas that will be addressed in occupational therapy sessions are as follows: