OUR SERVICES
Occupational Therapy
What is Occupational Therapy?
Occupational Therapy is concerned with an individual's ability to carry out activities of daily living that are important and meaningful to them. Occupation refers to any manner in which you spend your time, for example:
- personal care (washing, getting dressed, cleaning your teeth)
- productivity (domestic skills, accessing the community, paid or unpaid work)
- leisure activities (sports, games, hobbies, social life)
Occupational therapists work with people of all ages, who have difficulty doing the things they need or want to do in order to lead healthy and fulfilling lives.
What can Occupational Therapists do?
Occupational Therapists aim to help people overcome difficulites they experience in carrying out those things they want or need to do as a result of injury, illness or disease process. They use a variety of methods when treating, including making tasks easier to accomplish by rearranging the environment, providing assitive items which enable people to achieve a movement that they may not be able to physically achieve themselves for example if you are not allowed to bend after surgery but you want to be independently dressing yourself and not relying on others, there are long handled devices which would allow you that independence.
- Assessment and treatment of functional tasks e.g. dressing, cooking, work, fulfilling ones life roles
- Teaching of alternative, modified or compensatory techniques
- Advise on home modifications
- Advise on and prescription of adaptive equipment
- Wheelchair and cushion assessments and prescription (positioning and seating)
- Pressure care management
- Problem solving around individuals needs e.g. teaching coping strategies or techniques
- Liaising with social services, wheelchair services and private agencies (discharge planning)
- Splinting
- Family liasion and education on how best to facilitate quality of life and independence for each individual patient