If Occupational Therapy is More than Treating Occupational Diseases (1)

After reading my profile, your first reaction is probably: There is also a profession like an occupational therapist ! ? What exactly does it do... Could it be a therapist specializing in occupational diseases?

In fact, occupational therapy is the translated name of Hong Kong, Taiwan is called occupational therapy, and English is Occupational Therapy. (To be honest, as an occupational therapy student in Hong Kong, I really want to beat up the translator who often misunderstands our profession...)

Occupational therapists will treat and maintain physical, psychological and social health through purposeful activities for the patient, or reduce the impact of chronic diseases, developmental disorders and other irreversible conditions on the patient, so that the patient can live a better life maximum independence .

Don't know what to say after reading it! I just didn't know what this treatment was when I was a freshman, and now I finally understand the fur in my senior year. If you want to understand occupational therapy, you must first understand what is occupation (Occupation).

Occupation is not just the work we do in general, but any activity that takes up time. These activities are things we need to do, want to do, or have a responsibility to do, and give meaning and purpose to our lives. These activities fall broadly into the following categories:

• Activities of Daily Living (ADL)
• Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL)
• work
• EducationEducation
• Leisure ActivitiesLeisure
• Game Play
• Social Participation
• Rest and Sleep

Simply put, Occupations are all meaningful activities in your life. And our therapist will use Occupations as a medium (means) to design/formulate some purposeful activities (Purposeful activities) to improve the patient's impact on the disease, and to maintain the patient's independence and autonomy in Occupations Sex as ends. Not only can Occupations be completed independently, but maintaining the balance and time allocation between Occupations is also our concern. I don't understand the theory alone, let me give an example:

If encountering a tailor who has lost the ability to thread a needle due to a stroke, the therapist can use the tailor's remaining hand function to train the tailor's hand function by performing bead threading, so as to improve the tailor's hand function due to stroke. lost ability to work. In this case, "threading the needle" is the tailor's "work". This activity brings the meaning of work and money to the master's life. The therapist uses "bead threading" as the medium (means), and the trainer transmits the lost hand function - hand function will affect the ability of "threading the needle" and also the ability of the master to work (Occupations).

When I first studied occupational therapy theory, I listened attentively in every class, because the whole theory brought me to look at "people" from a new perspective. What I like most about this theory is that it really looks at "people" as "people", not as healthy or not. The reason a "person" is a "person" is that he can live a meaningful life independently; the reason a "person" is a "person" is that he can allocate his time well to do different and meaningful things; a "person" The reason for being a "human" is that he is treated as a human being... and are you still a "human"?

If you are interested in occupational therapy theory, remember to look forward to the next article!

References:
[1] American Occupational Therapy Association. (2020). Occupational Therapy Practice Framework: Domain and Process—Fourth Edition . The American Journal of Occupational Therapy , 74 (S2), 1–7412410010p87. https://doi.org/10.5014/ ajot.2020.74S2001

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