Ella's OT Student Blog

The OTPF stands for Occupational Therapy Practice Framework. It is composed of ideas, concepts, and philosophies that guide OT. It addresses domain of OT, the OT process, occupations, and client factors. The domain of OT is the areas in which OT's have a great wealth of knowledge and expertise.  This is what defines the focus of OT. Client factors, performance skills, performance patterns, context, environment, and activity demand are all under the domain of OT practice. Each part of the domain brings a different part of occupational therapy to the table.  The OT process is the actions that a practitioner takes when providing services that are client-centered and focused on engagement in occupation. This is what defines the delivery of OT. Throughout the process, occupation remains central. There is also collaboration with the client throughout the process.  Occupations are ordinary, part of daily living, and are often taken for granted. They can be special when they do not h

If you were to ask random people how they would define occupation a vast majority of the responses would be job or employment. While that is one definition of occupation, occupational therapists use another definition. Introduction to Occupational Therapy  by Jane Clifford O'Brien defines occupation as "Activity in which one engages that is meaningful and central to one's identity." Today in class, we learned about decades from the 30's to modern day. We learned about the society, politics, big events, education, healthcare, occupational therapy, work, and leisure. With each presentation it was interesting to see how each topic of the presentation changed, specifically occupations, the OT definition. One occupation that changed throughout the time periods was the role of women. With the start of World War II, women went from keeping the house and children together to working and keeping the house and children together. After soldiers returned home from war, women

After graduating from an accredited OT school, you are prepared to be an entry level generalist practitioner. During OT school and clinical rotations, you might have found a particular area of practice that really interests you. AOTA offers board certification in 4 areas of practice: Geriatrics, Pediatrics, Mental health and Physical rehab. Each area has different requirements and applications. Here is my story of how I fell in love with pediatrics. While I was preparing to apply to OT school I did an internship at a private clinic that specialized in therapy of children with autism and I shadowed/observed a therapist that was board certified in pediatrics. At this point in my OT journey, I was still unsure of what area of practice I was interested in, but I was wanting to go to different settings to figure that out. Before lunch on my first day, I knew that pediatrics, specifically children with autism, was an area that I was extremely interested in. I spent the next 3 weeks excited