What is Occupational Therapy?
Occupational therapy is a client-centred health profession concerned with promoting health and wellbeing through occupation. Occupations refer to the everyday activities that people do as individuals, in families, and with communities to occupy time and bring meaning and purpose to life. Occupations include things people need to, want to, and are expected to do (World Federation of Occupational Therapists, 2011).
What do Occupational Therapists Do?
Regardless of whether the recipient of occupational therapy is an individual, group, community, or whole society, the focus of occupational therapy is participation in the meaningful occupations of everyday life in the areas of:
Self Care
Productivity
Play & Leisure
Social Participation
What Therapy Approach Do We Use?
Bottom Up: OT evaluates the foundational components of function and develops a treatment plan based on deficits in these components.
Top Down: OT evaluates their functional status in relation to their daily occupations and develops a treatment plan based on their ability to participate in those occupations.
At HDST, our occupational therapist will largely employ a top down approach to assessment and intervention. With this approach, “the occupational therapist evaluates the patient’s functional status in relation to his or her daily occupations and develops the treatment plan based on the patient’s ability to participate in those occupations”. Using a top down approach will address functional performance and treatment will address participation in functional activity at the existing level of disability.