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Career Description

Assess, plan, organize and participate in rehabilitative programs that help build or restore vocational, homemaking and daily living skills, as well as general independence, to persons with disabilities or developmental delays.

What Job Titles Occupational Therapists Might Have

• Occupational Therapist (OT)
• Pediatric Occupational Therapist
• Registered Occupational Therapist
• Staff Therapist

What Occupational Therapists Do

• Complete and maintain necessary records.
• Test and evaluate patients' physical and mental abilities and analyze medical data to determine realistic rehabilitation goals for patients.
• Train caregivers how to provide for the needs of a patient during and after therapy.
• Evaluate patients' progress and prepare reports that detail progress.
• Plan, organize, and conduct occupational therapy programs in hospital, institutional, or community settings to help rehabilitate those impaired because of illness, injury or psychological or developmental problems.
• Select activities that will help individuals learn work and life-management skills within limits of their mental or physical capabilities.
• Recommend changes in patients' work or living environments, consistent with their needs and capabilities.
• Design and create, or requisition, special supplies and equipment, such as splints, braces, and computer-aided adaptive equipment.
• Develop and participate in health promotion programs, group activities, or discussions to promote client health, facilitate social adjustment, alleviate stress, and prevent physical or mental disability.
• Consult with rehabilitation team to select activity programs or coordinate occupational therapy with other therapeutic activities.
• Lay out materials such as puzzles, scissors and eating utensils for use in therapy, and clean and repair these tools after therapy sessions.
• Plan and implement programs and social activities to help patients learn work or school skills and adjust to handicaps.
• Help clients improve decision making, abstract reasoning, memory, sequencing, coordination, and perceptual skills, using computer programs.
• Provide training and supervision in therapy techniques and objectives for students or nurses and other medical staff.
• Conduct research in occupational therapy.
• Advise on health risks in the workplace or on health-related transition to retirement.

What Occupational Therapists Should Be Good At

• Problem Sensitivity - The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.
• Oral Comprehension - The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
• Oral Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
• Deductive Reasoning - The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
• Inductive Reasoning - The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
• Speech Clarity - The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
• Written Comprehension - The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
• Speech Recognition - The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
• Written Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
• Information Ordering - The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
• Fluency of Ideas - The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
• Originality - The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.

What Occupational Therapists Should Be Interested In

• Social - Social occupations frequently involve working with, communicating with, and teaching people. These occupations often involve helping or providing service to others.
• Investigative - Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.

What Occupational Therapists Need to Learn

• Psychology - Knowledge of human behavior and performance; individual differences in ability, personality, and interests; learning and motivation; psychological research methods; and the assessment and treatment of behavioral and affective disorders.
• Therapy and Counseling - Knowledge of principles, methods, and procedures for diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of physical and mental dysfunctions, and for career counseling and guidance.
• Medicine and Dentistry - Knowledge of the information and techniques needed to diagnose and treat human injuries, diseases, and deformities. This includes symptoms, treatment alternatives, drug properties and interactions, and preventive health-care measures.
• Education and Training - Knowledge of principles and methods for curriculum and training design, teaching and instruction for individuals and groups, and the measurement of training effects.
• English Language - Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
• Sociology and Anthropology - Knowledge of group behavior and dynamics, societal trends and influences, human migrations, ethnicity, cultures and their history and origins.
• Biology - Knowledge of plant and animal organisms, their tissues, cells, functions, interdependencies, and interactions with each other and the environment.
• Customer and Personal Service - Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.