At first glance, occupational therapy or OT can seem to be an ambiguous type of treatment. With its goals overlapping with and having several crossover roles between physical therapy, it has the potential to be passed over and not utilized for its benefits.
Thus, for this blog’s entry, we at Outcomes Therapy OPS, your trusted provider of therapy services, will be discussing with you the ways that occupational therapy distinguishes itself from other forms of therapy and what it really does to improve patients’ outcomes which ultimately allows them to live a high-quality life.
Fortunately, there is one major difference that distinguishes occupational therapy from other forms of therapeutic interventions such as physical therapy and speech therapy services—the focus of its treatment.
This focus is the whole person, making OT quite literally, a holistic treatment. Other disciplines, on the other hand, focus on specific impairments such as mobility difficulties and injuries for physical therapy. The way it does this is simple—by utilizing the person’s surroundings, environment, and ability to perform activities of daily living (ADL) therapeutically, occupational therapy is able to change how patients live with their condition, enabling them to deal with their injury, disability, or illness more healthily.
For instance, children with disabilities are able to fully participate in school and engage in social situations because OT uses their everyday activities to identify their issues and address them. Similarly, persons who have injuries are able to recover easily and regain their skills because they are allowed to do the very tasks they used to do.