How occupational therapy can make life easier and more efficient

Imagine this: Every day, you get up to get ready for work, you exit your bedroom feeling barely awake and your hair is a mess. However, before you can access the kitchen so that you can make breakfast, you have to push a grand piano out of the way. No matter how many times you’ve pushed the grand piano out of the way before, it’s always there the next morning, waiting for you.

Sounds unpleasant, right? Various health issues, such as illnesses or injuries, can create the same types of barriers to participating in daily activities.

Don’t let your own grand piano get in the way

Occupational therapists are clinicians who assist people who have these health issues so they can learn new ways of doing activities that matter to them. OTs assist people, helping them regain lost skills or develop new ones. Occupational therapists prescribe and train individuals, both young and old, to use materials or equipment that makes life easier, less confusing and more efficient.

In the case of the grand piano, if you had to move one every morning, you would likely be late for work and would feel emotionally frustrated. You might even hurt yourself moving such a heavy item. 

OTs work with people of all ages to remove their own grand pianos.  OTs can:

• Work with children and teachers in a classroom to help children develop skills such as handwriting or computer use, or provide strategies to manage behaviours. These skills will make it easier for students to learn and thrive in school.
• Work with a client who has a brain injury to assess and treat cognitive impairment, such as problems with the ability to think, remember or communicate. OTs can help patients recover from or manage issues related to their condition.
• Work with clients with a mental illness in outpatient programs. OTs can also assist people living with anxiety or depression to rebuild routine and productivity at home or the work place.
• Work with clients to identify and purchase equipment, such as wheelchairs or bathroom safety devices, to ensure clients can remain safely in their homes when their physical abilities have changed as a result of a condition, such as multiple sclerosis or arthritis, or aging.
• Work with a client following a workplace or motor vehicle injury to determine what the client may need in the future to be able to perform their work duties and what accommodations would enable better successful completion of essential job demands.
• Work with clients who have experienced a change in their physical or mental abilities to return to work by adapting how they do their job, what type of job they do or making changes to the workplace environment.

Don’t let your own grand piano get in the way

Through targeted interventions, occupational therapists can do more than remove barriers. In the long term, their solutions can also help prevent unnecessary hospital stays and readmissions, work injuries due to a poor work environment, premature moves to a nursing home, a child dropping out of school because of reading and writing difficulties or a poor attention span and unemployment among people with a mental illness or a developmental disability.

Do you have your own grand piano getting in their way?  Check our Locations page to find a clinic near you or book online to schedule an appointment with a Lifemark Occupational Therapist.