As of yesterday I am finally
officially studying Occupational Therapy!!!! *pause for crowd cheer* It was AWESOME!!! This degree is going to be fantastical and very different from what I have become accustomed in my bachelors. The first difference being starting a month earlier than most other courses. In addition, we only do one subject at a time. This means for February and march we only have two days of contact, though it is still 12-14 hours for only the one subject. However studying one subject at time should be better in regards to learning and assessment, though we will have overlapping assignments the subject coordinators have done their best to space them out adequately. Further, this course is largely based on PBL (problem based learning), which means we’re working together as a part of a team and each week we look at different ‘scenarios’ and address them as OT’s. How cool is that?! After one day it is already so different to psychology (already have a stack of study). Not that psych is bad, but studying it was very dry and competitive. Within OT however, it has been set up so we work closely with one group or team of people for several hours a week. They have done this on purpose because when we work in the real world we will be on a team with other people (such as doctors, nurses, social workers, PT’s, psychologists etc).
Yesterday was mainly introductory stuff, though not insignificant. We also learned about this thing called ‘activity analysis’ and how OT’s going about conducting one. Do you know what it is? I will tell you, it is the process of finding and or adjusting an occupation to achieve. As the all famous Gary Kielhofner says “it is an assessment of the fit between the characteristics and needs of a client (or client group) and a given activity”. So, in layman’s terms it is working out the best way for an individual to achieve a particular activity taking into consideration a difficulty they may have (be it emotional, psychological, physical, spiritual or a combination of all). When conducting an activity analysis the OT looks at four things: Occupation – activities that hold personal meaning and contexts; activity – an activity as it is typically done; tasks - smaller components of the activity; skill - observable, concrete, goal directed actions (that are needed for successful completion of the activity). OT’s use activity analysis to assess whether a client can perform the activity and or whether the activity can challenge latent abilities or capacities to build strength and improve function. Once this has been determined the OT will ADAPT (if needed) and GRADE (does is sequentially increase activity demands to stimulate function, or decreases activity demands to respond to client needs) the activity to create the “just right fit” and assist the client in achieving optimum outcome.
We also looked at the Canadian Model of Occupational Performance (CMOP), which involves the person, occupation and environment. Each of these sections is then further broken down into smaller components to better understand what is going on and what needs to happen so the issue can be addressed. This model aims to show the relationship between environment and occupation and person.
On that note friends, I must now be off to work.
“Occupation is anything people do to occupy themselves”
